“Well, Agnes,” remarked Ruth, when the household had settled into its usual calm routine, “shall we go down town and see Miss Ann Titus?”
“About our dresses? Oh, I suppose so. But don’t say a word about those two men!”
“Oh, of course not! There is no need of its being known all over the neighborhood, and I know what Ann Titus is as well as you do. Mum is the word, as Neale would say.”
The girls found Miss Titus, as usual, with a mouth full of pins, as she draped a dress on one of the forms in her little house. But even the pins in her mouth did not prevent the village dressmaker from talking:
“So glad you came in. I have some of the loveliest new patterns and ideas, straight from Paris, my dears! You know they’re wearing fuller and longer skirts now, and——”
“No extreme styles, if you please, Miss Titus,” said Ruth, firmly.
“Oh, I know, my dear. You were always so preservative, and I quite apprehend what you mean. At the same time if a dress isn’t the least bit chick nowadays, it is sort of pass, don’t you think?”
The girls could hardly keep their faces straight during this mispronunciation of French words and misapplication of English ones. Poor Ann Titus had not formerly been this way, but since a new dressmaker had started a place in Milton, Miss Titus thought it necessary to adopt for herself what she considered a French style, and some of what she thought were their mannerisms, while she had the plate on her door changed from the word “Dressmaker,” to the foreign one “Modes.”
However, she was a good soul, if gossipy, and as long as Ruth and Agnes knew her failing they were on their guard.
They were in the midst of a discussion over materials and patterns when Ruth, happening to look from an open window near the street, saw two men passing.