Emma Jane Anton kept on methodically removing the wrappers and folding them neatly. "Perhaps," suggested Adelaide, "they have merely arranged this hoax to fool us, and the costume is still at the Roseveldts'."
"It's just like that Cynthia Vaughn to do such a thing; we'll go, all the same," Witch Winnie replied, rising hopefully and tying on her veil. At this juncture Emma Jane reached a pasteboard box marked "Violet velvet court dress." Lifting the lid discovered a quantity of trash. An empty sardine-box bore the label "Diamond Crown;" a dilapidated bustle was marked "Brussels point lace;" a mixed-pickle bottle was filled with apple-parings and labeled "Old repoussé châtelaine, reign of Arthur I.; the real article; must be returned."
A howl of mingled laughter and dismay rose from our corner. "Cynthia Vaughn wrote that letter which purported to be from Milly. Well, it's a real good practical joke, anyway," said Witch Winnie; "better than I thought the Hornets could get up without my help. Let us show them that we can take a joke, and good-naturedly acknowledge ourselves sold."
"And in the mean time what am I to do for a costume? You know the tableaux come off to-night."
"That puts another face on the matter."
"I suppose Cynthia would be only too glad to take the part even now."
"After all we have said, and your name printed on the programme—never!" This from Adelaide.
"I'll tell you what we will do," suggested Winnie; "the hansom is still waiting at the door; Tib and I will drive to a costumer's and hire something. I found the address of a place on the Bowery the other day and fortunately saved it. Hold your heads up high; we will not acknowledge ourselves defeated yet."
As Witch Winnie and I sped out of the quiet square and down the great teeming thoroughfare, the Elevated trains jarring overhead and the motley crowd surging about us, a misgiving of conscience swept over me. What would Madame say? This was not what we had obtained permission to do. This was very different from Fifth Avenue, and not at all a quarter of the city in which young ladies should be wandering without chaperons.
We were quite desperate, however, and it seemed too late to turn back. The hansom stopped before a Hebrew misfit clothing store where dress suits were announced as on hire by the evening. Flaunting placards above told that costumes for the theatrical profession and for fancy balls were to be let in the fourth story. We climbed a dirty staircase, and after knocking by mistake at an intelligence office for Dienst Mädchen, a hair-dyeing and complexion-enameling rooms, a chiropodist's, and a clairvoyant's, we found ourselves in a room piled from floor to ceiling with costumes. A fat German, who looked as if he were some second-hand piece of furniture, very much soiled as to his linen, and the worse for wear as to his physical mechanism, admitted us and did the honors of the establishment. I glanced around at the motley objects which filled the wareroom; gaudy spangled dresses, with a sprinkle of saw-dust (suggestive of the arena) clinging to the worn cotton velvet, many-ruffled shockingly brief skirts of rose-colored gauze that had spun like so many teetotums behind flaring foot-lights, tinfoil suits of armor that had come in all mud-besplashed from parading the streets at the last grand procession, the faded banners which flapped above them so jauntily, drooping wearily now from the rafters, covered with dust and festooned by the spiders. A row of dominoes dependent from a neighboring clothes-line rustled with an air of mystery, and a heap of masks upon the floor seemed to leer and wink from their eyeless windows.