“Our Miss Carter’s just what you need,” he said. “I’ll send for her. She’ll be invaluable. I’d go with you myself, only duty—and of course a woman—”
“Exactly,” agreed Archibald.
Our Miss Carter materialized as a plump little woman with a firm chin, a pleasant voice, and kindly brown eyes behind eyeglasses. She understood the situation at once, without fuss, without debate. Archibald gave her Miss Moran’s list and she read it gravely.
“The hat and the parasol seem to be the most important things,” she said without hesitation. “Suppose we get them first.”
Pegeen’s hand squeezed Archibald’s ecstatically. Here was a sensible, intelligent person with a sense of values.
The pink roses were not “large pink roses” after all. Not that a heavily marcelled and enameled daughter of Israel, under Miss Carter’s stimulus, did not show the shoppers an uncommonly fine line of enormous pink roses. She was unflagging in her efforts. She called Pegeen “my dear” from the start and after the first few hats, bestowed an occasional “my dear” upon Archibald, in her fine glow of friendly feeling; but there was a certain mushroom-brimmed little hat, faced in pink and wreathed in wild roses, to which Pegeen lost her heart utterly, irrevocably, at first sight.
“They’re so darling and Valleyish,” she explained to Archibald, and he understood what she meant. Moreover, the piquant little face and the wild-rose hat rimed in a way to satisfy his artist soul and to strengthen his growing conviction that Pegeen was headed toward beauty and already well on the way. The parasol was easily chosen—a pink one to match the hat—but on the subject of frocks, there was serious debate. Archibald centered his affections upon a pink linen that Miss Carter considered impracticable from the point of view of laundering.
“Of course if she could afford to have a great many,” she began. The artist waved the laundry problem aside.
“We will take the pink one,” he announced firmly, and Pegeen heaved a sigh of satisfaction, though she had nobly sided with the advisory committee on the subject of laundering.
“And a couple of white things,” said Archibald,—“and then be as practical as you please, so long as practical doesn’t mean ugly.” There were ten frocks in the pile when they called a halt and Pegeen’s astonished eyes were so widely, darkly blue that they seemed to fill most of her face. “Now a coat and raincoat,” prompted the Fairy Godfather,—and when the coats were chosen, he felt in his pockets for his pipe.