"We certainly did," said Eva.
"Isn't Miss Dorcas a beauty!" said Jim.
"Come, now, Jim; no slants," said Alice.
"I didn't mean any. Honest now, I like the old girl. She's sensible. She gets such clothes as she thinks right and proper, and marches straight ahead in them, instead of draggling and draggletailing after fashion; and it's a pity there weren't more like her."
"Dress is a vile, tyrannical Moloch," said Eva. "We are all too much enslaved to it."
"I know we are," said Alice. "I think it's the question of our day, what sensible women of small means are to do about dress; it takes so much time, so much strength, so much money. Now, if these organizing, convention-holding women would only organize a dress reform, they would do something worth while."
"The thing is," said Eva, "that in spite of yourself you have to conform to fashion somewhat."
"Unless you do as your Quaker friends do," said Bolton.
"By George," said Jim Fellows, "those two were the best dressed women in the room. That little Ruth was seductive."