Later in September Cousin Maria Buxton came down for a week's visit and shopping, and brought Selina a dress to add to her outfit for the warm climate. Cousin Maria was solid and handsome, as said before; her hair, still black, was parted and banded down to her ears about her strong and healthily florid face and her black eyes surveyed the world capably. The morning after her arrival she came into Mamma's room from her own room adjoining, which really was Auntie's, with the garment in question just taken from her trunk, hanging over her arm.
"It's a dress made last spring for one of Alice's girls. She's never had it on. They have so many they outgrow them before they get around to them."
Alice was one of Cousin Maria's two daughters by her first husband. She had married a prominent stock-farmer in her part of the state and was rich. The other had married a tobacco farmer and was rich likewise.
"Lavinia," pleaded Auntie, remindingly.
"I had said Selina never should wear finery again not her own," explained Mamma.
"Well, isn't it her own?" returned Cousin Maria emphatically, "and haven't you and Ann Eliza been playing mothers to my Culpepper? Come now, Lavinia, I shall be downright put out. Ann Eliza, you may as well give in."
As for Selina herself, standing by, the good ladies, as was their custom, never for a moment thought of allowing her a voice in the discussion at all!
It was a dear dress that she, used to being obedient, here was bidden to try on, just as Cousin Anna Tomlinson happening by, came upstairs. There was not much to it, though in that perhaps lay its appeal. Scant and slip-like, with a show of her pretty throat, and a show, too, of her slim nice ankles, it consisted of hand needlework on a texture of limp mull.
"Like our India muslins when we were young," Auntie was obliged to allow to Cousin Maria with satisfaction.
"Made by the sisters here in the convent on Madeleine Street," said Cousin Maria.