At 9 A.M. there was tranquil jubilation, at 10 A.M. there was sudden dismay. “I can’t wear it like this,” Ursula was saying to Harriet, with whom she had come to terms on a basis of mutual oblivion. She sat on the floor, a brown heap of perplexity. Her simple evening dress lay on the bed, with a round stain, as of grease, distressingly displayed upon its breast. It was a frock of crushed-strawberry crepon, with ripe-strawberry silk ribbons.
“No, you can’t,” asserted Harriet, full of interest and sympathy. Harriet was in her element. “You must manage to get some more of that crimson lace for the front. How can it have happened, Ursula? Something must have oozed out in your trunk.”
“But colored lace is so difficult to match,” wailed Ursula.
“So it is. Never mind. We must try.” And the two girls sallied forth on that most hopeless of errands, the only form of shopping no woman enjoys, “the matching” of colors. In every shop they entered their little scrap was held up against an incongruous variety of tints, and they were informed by the assistant that it was “exactly the shade.” One especially truthful person qualified her recommendation of a moderate scarlet by the statement that “really it was as near as you could get.” But all, without exception, were pertly offended when the girls crept hopelessly, though resolutely, away.
“It’s no use,” said Harriet at last, as they retraced their steps. But even while she spoke a sudden inspiration struck her. “Do you know what you’ll have to do, Ursula? It’s V-shaped now; well, you’ll have to make it into a low-neck.”
“Oh, I don’t like that,” cried the pastor’s daughter, reddening.
“There’s no choice left to you. How stupid of me not to think of it before. It’ll look much nicer, too.”
“But supposing we matched the ribbons?” suggested Ursula, holding out.
“You never could in this primitive place. They’re a very peculiar color. Besides, if you covered up all that space with ribbon, you’d look like a prize cow. No, the top’ll have to come off, and we must see about a dress-maker at once. There’s no time to lose.”
They turned down a by-street.