"Leonie took the prize for the best minew!" exclaimed Mrs. Loftus, triumphantly. "Tell Miss Grahame your prize minew, Leonie."
Nothing loth, Leonie described the dinner at length, from little-neck clams to coffee; and a very fine dinner it was.
"Hm!" grunted Mr. Loftus, "better dinner than we ever get from your twelve-dollar cook, Mrs. L. Hm! Fine dinners on paper, I dare say. Hand me that salad! Why don't you give Miss Grahame some more salad? She ain't eating anything at all."
"Then we had lectures on the Art of Dress," continued the fair student of Madame Vivien's. "Those were very interesting."
"Well, dress does change, the most of anything!" exclaimed Mrs. Loftus. "To see the difference now from when I was a girl! Why, when I was married I had thirty-five yards of silk in my wedding dress, and now nobody don't have more than ten or twelve. Almost too scant to cover 'em, it seems sometimes."
"Thirty-five yards, mamma!" exclaimed her daughter. "You're joking!"
"Not a mite!" Mrs. Loftus said firmly. "Thirty-five yards of white satin, and trimmed with four whole pieces of lace and three hundred and eighty-two bows." The two girls exclaimed in wonder, and Mrs. Loftus continued in high good-humour. "Yes, a dress was a dress in those days. Why, I had one walking dress, a brown silk it was, with fifty yards in it."
"But how was it possible?" cried Hildegarde. "Did you wear crinoline?"
"No," was the reply, "not a mite of hoop-skirt; but things were very full, you see, Miss Grahame. That brown dress, now; it had a deep side-plaiting all round, and an overskirt, very full too, and the back very deep, flounced, scalloped, and trimmed with narrow piping, looped in each corner with scallops. There was a deep fringe round the basque and overskirt, and coming up from the postilion (that was deep, too), to loop on the left shoulder."
"Well, it sounds awful!" said Leonie frankly. "You must have been a perfect sight, mamma!"