“And while we are resting, we can study art,” exclaimed Tavia, gazing at the oil paintings and tapestry that adorned the walls.
A woman, with a grand assortment of large bundles and small children, tried to get them all into her arms at once, preparatory to leaving the resting room, but found it so difficult that she sat down once more and laughed good-naturedly, while the children scrambled about the place, loath to leave such comfortable quarters. Dorothy watched with interest, and wondered how any woman could ever venture out with so many small children clinging to her for protection, to do a day’s shopping. Tavia was more interested in art at that moment.
“Why go to the art museums?” she asked, “we can do that part on our trip right here and now; we only lack catalogues.”
“And we can do nicely without them,” said Dorothy, dragging her wandering attention back to Tavia. “I can enjoy all these pictures without knowing who painted them. We can have just five minutes more in this palatial room, and then we simply must go on.”
And five minutes after the hour, Dorothy persuaded Tavia to leave the ideal spot, and, entering the elevator, they were whirled upward to the dress parade.
Roped off from the velvet, carpeted sales floors, numerous statuesque girls paraded about, dressed in garments to charm the eye of all beholders—to lure the very short and stout person into purchasing a garment that looked divine on a willowy six-foot model; or, a wee bit of a lady into thinking that she can no longer exist, unless robed in a cloak of sable. But neither Dorothy nor Tavia cared much for the lure of the gorgeous garments, they were too awed at the moment to yearn for anything. A frail, ethereal creature, with a face of such delicacy and wistfulness, so dainty and graceful, with a little dimpled smile about her lips, passed the country girls and after that the girls could see nothing else in the room. They sat down and just watched her. A trailing robe of black velvet seemed almost too heavy for her slender white shoulders, and a large hat with snow white plume curling over the rim of the hat and encircling her bare throat, like a serpent, framed her flushed face.
“There,” breathed Tavia, “is the prettiest face I’ve ever dreamed of seeing.”
“She’s more than pretty, she has a soul,” said Dorothy, reverently. “There is something so wistful about her smile and the tired droop of her shoulders. I feel that I could love her!”
“She has put on an ermine wrap over the velvet gown,” said Tavia. Shrinking behind Dorothy she said impulsively: “Dare we speak to her? It must be the most wonderful thing in the world to have a face like that! And to spend all her days just wearing beautiful gowns!”
“She wears them so differently from the others here,” declared Dorothy. “She’s strikingly cool, so far beyond her immediate surroundings.”