“I’m sure I don’t know what I should say to that!” she exclaimed. Then, as Mark looked at her in blank amazement, she recalled herself. “Of course, walk over with them, Mark; we are not going to bed for an hour or so,” she added.
“They’re awfully good to me, Mary and Win,” said Mark, as they went along the street made silent by Vineclad’s early bedtime habits. “Mr. Moulton is trusting me more and more with important bits of his work, and they both are treating me as if they considered me something besides a snip of a boy whom they were paying. I’m having a fine time with them and the botanical work I wanted to do but never expected to be able to touch.”
“Gets better every day, doesn’t it?” cried Mary, raising her face to his, glowing with pure joy over this fortunate state of things.
“Every day lovelier than the last!” declared Mark, looking into Mary’s unclouded, unsuspicious eyes. And Win silently received the impression which, a little earlier, had startled Mrs. Moulton, but of which Mary was as unconscious as a crystal is of the rainbow colours playing through it.
In the succeeding days after this call the hours sped rapidly, filled with the absorbing topic of the garden party and its business. The invitations were sent out and all but six of them were accepted. The gowns sent up from New York by the famous house of Oldfellow proved to be deliriously attractive. Mary did not hesitate a moment, but seized upon a soft white gown, so simple in its lines, so exquisite in material, design, and workmanship, with its only trimming real lace upon its clinging round neck and sleeves, that it seemed to have been designed expressly for this girl, whose sweetness was of a type that forbade ornate decoration. Jane could not decide between a pale green gown and a pale golden one, either of which made of her brilliant, delicate beauty a jewel perfectly set. The golden gown won the day at last and in it Jane’s red-gold tints of hair and eyes became the attributes of a sun-maiden. Florimel was offered no choice of colour, only of design in various rose pinks. Above each one she glowed like a living rose. The frock they all voted for her to wear was the palest of them all, a shell-like rose colour, floating over its own shade.
Mrs. Garden was in ecstasy; she gained in strength on each of these happy days. “I don’t care what the party is like, I’m having such fun now!” she truthfully declared.
Mrs. Mills, whose cakes were the correct supplement to one’s own kitchen limitations in Vineclad, sparing the housekeeper the mortification of having recourse to a professional caterer, made the best examples of her skill for the Garden garden party. Ice cream might be ordered from the nearest large town; Vineclad did not disapprove of buying ice cream, so for this party it was ordered from abroad. But this did not release the Garden kitchen from weighty obligations and achievements. It was supplemented by Violet, Mrs. Moulton’s most competent and blackest of cooks, to whom the preparation of the coffee was securely entrusted. Twelve young girls, from the nearby industrial school orphanage, were engaged to serve the guests. They were to be dressed alike, in white waists and skirts, and Mrs. Garden pronounced their effect “refreshing among the garden foliage and blossoms.”
Jane dressed her mother’s hair, relieved to know that her picturesque hat would more than conceal any deficiency in her maid’s skill. The gown which had but once before appeared in public, and then in an august and distant place, was revealed for the first time to the girls; Mrs. Garden had refused them a glimpse of it before the day. It was of white lace, skirt, waist, and coat, lined with white silk, yet touched, with a French artist’s skill, with exactly the correct effective amount of a wonderful red, like the heart of a rare rose. Roses of the same shade lay, as if they had fallen, on one side of the lace on the hat, and the same marvellous colour lined the lace parasol, that added the last touch of perfection to the costume.
“Didn’t that young earl, Lord Balindale, die on his twenty-first birthday? I’d expect that dress and all to be the end of him,” said Florimel, regarding her mother literally with open mouth and eyes.
“Nice, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Garden, much gratified by the effect of her magnificence. “No, he survived, Florimel. There were other gowns there that day which might easily have been as fatal as this one. Do you suppose all Vineclad will perish off the earth? We’ve asked most of it here.”