She swooped down upon Miss Letitia and hugged her with violence to make up for that moment of inward dissatisfaction with Miss Letitia's loving work. Miss Letitia's glasses were knocked off in the sudden swoop and fell into her lap. She looked most surprised at this unexpected proceeding, though highly gratified, as she retrieved the glasses. Had she asked Miss Asenath about it, Miss Asenath could probably have told her just what had been passing through Arethusa's mind. Miss Asenath had been watching Arethusa. She was never tired of watching her, in every smallest thing the girl did, with loving eyes that took keen delight in her youth and life and vivid coloring.
Arethusa gazed around at the many garments in various stages that were strewn about the room; every single one of them was hers. All the plain white cotton under-things, one or two of them with puffings or a bit of "thread" lace whipped around their edges, as a concession to the unusualness of this occasion; the few simple shirtwaists, trimmed with neat tucking; the "medium lisle" stockings Miss Eliza was marking in pairs after a method of her own invention; the plain dark suit that Miss Letitia had completed only that morning, and which Miss Asenath's frail fingers were even at this moment engaged in further finishing with a braid-binding all around the skirt to save the hem; the new hat which Arethusa had tried on for them with the finished suit to see how well they went together, and which was lying now on top of the piano; and the silk dress in Miss Letitia's lap: it was all hers. But there was nothing frivolous in the array, nothing at all light in color, save perhaps the underclothes and the shirtwaists; there was not one purely decorative or "frilly" garment such as the heart of girlhood loves. It was a wardrobe, without doubt, entirely of Miss Eliza's choosing.
"Aunt 'Liza," Arethusa knelt down by that lady's chair and put her glowing face very close to her aunt's; her tone was most wheedling. "Aunt 'Liza, is there any of my money left?"
"There is," declared Miss Eliza, with satisfaction. "There is. I've saved your step-mother quite a tidy bit of what she sent. It's too bad if Ross has married a woman with extravagant tastes just like his own; too bad! But it would seem as if he had. All that money for just one girl! Put your dress on again, child, you oughtn't to sit around that way. Yes, you're going to have quite a sum to take back to your step-mother."
Arethusa wished that Miss Eliza would not say "step-mother" with just such an emphasis. It made her seem so undesirable a relative to have acquired, Miss Eliza's way of saying the name. And Arethusa did not choose to think of Elinor as anything undesirable. She was nothing that was not perfect. She was certainly nothing that deserved to be distinguished by such a term of reproach as that "step-mother." Practising saying "Mother" very softly to herself, Arethusa had come to regard Elinor that way, without the sign of a "step."
She ignored the injunction to put on her dress and leaned coaxingly nearer to Miss Eliza, whose habitually stern expression softened involuntarily. But how could she help it, with that glowing face wheedling so close to her own? Miss Eliza, after all, was not wood or iron.
"Then please, Aunt 'Liza, let me have another dress?"
"What do you want with another dress, 'Thusa?" Miss Eliza sounded almost indulgent. "This silk one makes three new ones, counting your suit."
"I know," Arethusa said, a trifle apologetically, as if she knew it was a strange request. "I know, but I want a Party Dress. I want," and she hurried on with the expression of her want in desperate haste lest she be stopped before she had finished, "I want a Green Dress?"
"A green dress! Mercy on us! With your hair! Why, Arethusa Worthington!" Miss Eliza was plainly horrified.