Brace and Conning came in together. “Look who’s here!” was Kendall’s brotherly greeting. “Gee! Con, look at our lady friend!” He held his sister off at arms’ length and commented upon her “points.”
“I didn’t know your hair curled, Lyn.”
“I didn’t, myself, until this afternoon. You see,” she trembled a bit, “now that I do not have to go in the subway to business there’s no reason for excluding—this sort of thing” (she touched the pretty gown), “and once you let yourself go, you do not know where you will land. Curls go with these frills; slippers, too—look!”
Then she glanced up at Conning.
“Do you think I’m very—frivolous?” she asked.
“I never knew”—he was gazing seriously at her—“how handsome you are, Lyn. Wear that gown morning, noon and night; it’s stunning.”
“I’m glad you both like it. I feel a little unusual in it—but I’ll settle down. I have been a trifle prim in dress.”
Like the giant’s robe, Lynda Kendall’s garments seemed to transform her and endow her with the attributes peculiar to themselves. So gradually, that it caused no wonder, she developed the blessed gift of charm and it coloured life for herself and others like a glow from a hidden fire.
All this did not interfere with her business. Once she donned her working garb she was the capable Lynda of the past. A little more sentiment, perhaps, appeared in her designs—a wider conception; but that was natural, for happiness had come to her—and a delicious sense of success. She, womanlike, began to rejoice in her power. She heard of John Morrell’s marriage to a young western girl, about this time, with genuine delight. Her sky was clearing of all regrets.
“Morrell was in the office to-day,” Brace told his sister one evening, “it seemed to me a bit brash for him to lay it on so thick about his happiness and all that sort of rot.”