The two Lawson sisters, Imogen and Sarah, greeted Elmira with a shrill feminine clamor of hospitality, as was their wont, examined her mother's wedding silk with critical eyes and fingers, and pronounced it well worth making over. “It's best to buy a good thing while you're about it, if it does cost a little more,” said Imogen.
“Yes, that's true,” assented her sister. “Now I shouldn't be a mite surprised if Ann paid as much as one an' sixpence for this silk when 'twas new; but look at it now—there ain't a break in it. It's as good as your blue-and-yellow changeable silk, Imogen.”
“Dun'no' but 'tis,” said Imogen, reflectively.
Sarah went with Elmira to the mantua-maker's, who lived in the next house, to get the dress cut, while Imogen prepared the dinner. In the afternoon the two sisters gave Elmira an hour's work on her new gown, one stitching up the body, the other sewing breadths; then they borrowed the neighbor's horse and wagon and drove her home to Upham.
Elmira was glad to ride; she thought that she should die of shame should she walk home and meet Lawrence Prescott again.
Imogen drove. She was the older, but the larger and stronger of the two. Elmira sat in the rear gloom of the covered wagon with Sarah, holding her silk gown spread carefully over her knees. She thought of nothing all the way but the possibility of meeting Lawrence. She made up her mind that if she did she would sit far back in the wagon and not thrust her head forward at all. “If he acts as if he thought I might be in here, and looks real hard, then it will be time for me to do my part,” she thought.
Whenever she saw a man or a team in the distance, her heart beat violently, but it was never Lawrence. All her sweet panic of expectation would have been quieted had she known that he was at that very time seated in Miss Camilla Merritt's arbor, drinking tea and eating fruit cake with her and pretty Lucina.
“Didn't you think Elmira seemed dreadful kind of flighty to-day—still as a mouse one minute and carryin' on the next?” Sarah asked Imogen, as they were driving home in the evening. They had waited, staying to tea and letting the horse rest, until the full moon arose.
“Yes, I did,” said Imogen, “but Ann was just like her at her age. That silk is well enough, but it ain't no such quality as my blue an' yellow changeable one.”
“Well, I dun'no' as it is. I dun'no' as it's as good as my figured brown one.”