“And we know all the time that we’ve really got the dresses, only they aren’t made up!” finished Miss Amelia, in tearful triumph.
So the silk was laid away in two big rolls, and for another year the old black alpaca gowns trailed across the town’s thresholds and down the aisle of the church on Sunday. Their owners no longer sought shadowed corners and sunless rooms, however; it was not as if one were obliged to wear sponged and darned alpacas!
Plaits were “out” next year, and the Heath sisters were among the first to read it in the fashion notes. Once more on a bright spring morning Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia left the house tenderly bearing in their arms the brown-paper parcels--and once more they returned, the brown parcels still in their arms. There was an air of indecision about them this time.
“You see, Amelia, it seemed foolish--almost wicked,” Miss Priscilla was saying, “to put such a lot of that expensive silk into just sleeves.”
“I know it,” sighed her sister.
“Of course I want the dresses just as much as you do,” went on Miss Priscilla, more confidently; “but when I thought of allowing Mis’ Snow to slash into that beautiful silk and just waste it on those great balloon sleeves, I--I simply couldn’t give my consent!--and ’tisn’t as though we hadn’t got the dresses!”
“No, indeed!” agreed Miss Amelia, lifting her chin. And so once more the rolls of black silk were laid away in the great box that had already held them a year; and for another twelve months the black alpacas, now grown shabby indeed, were worn with all the pride of one whose garments are beyond reproach.
When for the third time Miss Priscilla and Miss Amelia returned to their home with the oblong brown parcels there was no indecision about them; there was only righteous scorn.
“And do you really think that Mis’ Snow expected us to allow that silk to be cut up into those skimpy little skin-tight bags she called skirts?” demanded Miss Priscilla, in a shaking voice. “Why, Amelia, we couldn’t ever make them over!”
“Of course we couldn’t! And when skirts got bigger, what could we do?” cried Miss Amelia. “Why, I’d rather never have a black silk dress than to have one like that--that just couldn’t be changed! We’ll go on wearing the gowns we have. It isn’t as if everybody didn’t know we had these black silk dresses!”