"De ladies is gittin' ready fo' de ball, I'specks, Miss Joan, fittin' on dey new dresses."
"New dresses? A ball?" repeated the surprised Joan, who did not connect these activities with her own début, scheduled to take place a month or so later. "I must investigate!" and ignoring Susy's best efforts to toll her into the parlor, she pursued the chatter to its source.
She avoided that parlor whenever possible, having earlier exhausted its charms. It was a rather dismal chamber, with shutters always closed against a too-revealing sunlight. Innumerable small tables and a double mantel-shelf were crowded with articles of vertu in the shape of hand-painted vases, and ginger-jars, and marble hands. On the walls, concealing as much as possible of the original decoration, hung specimens of all the artistic aspirations of the Darcy family and friends; "Yards of Pansies," still-life studies of a fan in interesting juxtaposition to a coal-scuttle, and the like. Concealment seemed to be the motif of the decoration-scheme. The fireplace was concealed by moribund cat-tails, the former usefulness of a spinning-wheel was concealed by gilt paint, the function of the lamp was concealed, if not permanently impaired, by a ruffled blue silk petticoat reminiscent for the best of reasons of a certain blue silk party-dress that had once done yeoman's service in the family.
The elegance of their parlor enabled Joan's cousins to ask several dollars more a month for their rooms than did any other house in the square; but Joan, who, had inherited from the maternal side a strain of practicality, positively ached in her joints at the thought of the hours it must take to thoroughly sweep and dust it—if indeed it ever were thoroughly swept and dusted.
She poked her head around a door that stood ajar on the third floor: "May I come in?"
The three turned startled faces to greet her, two in dressing-sacks whose fronts bristled with pins, the third in a costume which seemed vaguely familiar, a dress which glittered with jet sequins and was cut so low that it was perhaps fortunate Miss Euphemia had neglected to remove her gray flannel underwear.
"Why, Joan!" they chorused, dismay mingling with their welcome. (Even in conversation they were a most united family, speaking usually all three at once.) "However did you find your way up here? That stupid Susy should have shown you into the drawing-room!—or at least have announced you, so that you would not have caught us like this."
"Nonsense! Susy tried to shoo me into the parlor, but I wouldn't be shooed; and as for 'announcing' me—she did howl up the stairs. But you were too engrossed to hear." The naïve respect with which they treated their prosperous young cousin always mortified Joan. She had her own conception of the family dignity. "You'd suppose I'd never seen a dressing-sack or a sewing-machine in my life, whereas I was raised on 'em.—My word, Cousin Euphie, how grand you are!"
"Am I, dear? The dress is grand, I know," said Miss Euphemia doubtfully, "but I'm not sure it's quite in my style. The others thought I'd better have it because I'm plumpest, in the—in the chest, you know. But really, the waist!—There simply isn't any, Joan! What would you suggest?"
"A yoke," said the girl gravely.