She planned her clothes for St. Pierre with mocking but intense deliberation. A dark blue tricotine dress—she bought that at the ladies’ specialty shop and taking it home ripped off all the trimming substituting the flattest and darkest of braid. That was safe, she knew. She might not be startling but she would be inoffensive, she told her mother. There was a dress made by Miss Peterson, who sewed by the day, from a remnant of bronze georgette, and half shamefacedly Freda came home one night with a piece of flame colored satin and made it herself into a gown which hung from the shoulders very straightly and was caught at the waist with silver cord (from the drapery department). And there was an evening dress at which Freda scoffed but she and Miss Peterson spent some fascinated hours over it, making pale green taffetas and tulle fit her lovely shoulders.
“Though what I’m getting these clothes for is a mystery to me,” grumbled Freda. “They probably won’t even ask me to go out. Probably suggest that I eat with the servants.”
Yet she tried on the evening dress in the privacy of her room parading before her bureau mirror, which could not be induced to show both halves of her at once. And as she looked in the glass there came back the reflection of a girl a little flushed, excited, eager, as if in spite of all her mockery there was a dream that she would conquer unknown people and things—a hope that wonders were about to happen.
Never was there a trace of that before her mother. Having agreed to go, Freda was, on the whole, complaisant, but on principle unenthusiastic.
Her father gave her two hundred dollars the night before she went away. Mrs. Thorstad was at a neighbor’s house and the gift was made in her absence without comment on that fact. Freda, whose idea of a sizable check for her spending money was five dollars and of an exceptionally large one, ten, gasped.
“But what do I need this for?”
“You’ll find ways, my dear. It’s—for some of the little things which these other young ladies may have and you may lack. To put you at ease.”
“Yes, but it’s too much, father dear. For three or four weeks. You can’t possibly afford it.”
“Oh, yes, my dear. Only try to be happy, won’t you? Remember that it’s always worth while to learn and that there are very few people in the world who aren’t friendly by nature.”
That thought carried Freda through the next twenty-four hours, beginning with worry when she got on the train as to whether they were expecting her after all, through a flurry of excitement at the sense of “city” in St. Pierre, the luxury of the limousine which had been sent to meet them, through the embarrassment of hearing her mother begin to orate in a mild fashion on the beauty of Mrs. Brownley’s home and the “real home spirit” which she felt in it. Freda felt sure that such conversation was not only out of place but bad taste anyway. She was divided between a desire to carry the visit off properly, showing the Brownleys that she was not gauche and stupid, and an impulse to stalk through the days coldly, showing her disdain for mere material things and the impossibility of impressing her. Yet the deep softness of the hall rugs, the broad noiseless stair carpets, the glimpses through doorways into long quiet rooms seemingly full of softly upholstered furniture, lamps with wonderfully colored shades, pictures which had deep rich colors like the colors in the rugs, made her eyes shine, her color heighten.