“Certainly,” and again the clerk was all smiles and attention, and began to exhibit his goods, while Mrs. Morton whispered nervously, “But, Miss Belknap, you don’t understand. I’ve only forty dollars; I cannot afford it.”
“I can,” Beatrice replied. “I have more money than I can spend. Let me give you the dress. I’ll take it as a great favor, and you can use the forty dollars for something else.”
There were tears in Mrs. Morton’s eyes, and her face was very white, as she said:
“No, no; that’s too much from you, a stranger. Theo would not like it.”
“I’ll make it right with Theo. I’m not a stranger to him,” Bee answered, and so the silk was bought, and velvet to trim it with, and then they moved to another part of the store for something for the children, and met a whole regiment of ladies, Mrs. Gen. Stuckup with Mrs. Sniffe, who were delighted to see Bee, but looked askance at her companion, wondering if it was some poor relation of whom they had never heard, and commiserating Bee, who must feel so mortified.
She was not mortified one whit now, though she had been at the start, but she despised herself thoroughly for it and was very attentive to her companion, and when Mrs. Sniffe, who was frightfully envious of her, and never failed to sting her if she could do it, asked her in an aside, with a roll of her eyes; “Who is that frump of a woman, and how came she fastened to you?” she answered, readily, “It is Mrs. Theodore Morton, wife of a returned missionary, whose name you must have seen if you ever read the papers. He is very highly esteemed by the board as a Christian and a gentleman. Some connection of Gov. Morton, of Massachusetts, I believe.”
“Oh, yes, and you are doing missionary work in your own way, I see. It’s quite like you,” Mrs. Sniffe said, as she passed on to the laces and left Bee and Mrs. Morton to themselves.
“That woman made fun of me and called me a frump,” Mrs. Morton falteringly said, with a quivering lip, but fire in her eye, as she looked after the retreating bundle of velvet, and silk, and ostrich feathers.
“Never mind. You don’t care for her. They say she used to work in the factory at Lowell, and married a man old enough to be her father, but he had a million, and died, and left it to her, and now she is Mrs. Sniffe, and leads a certain class of simpletons,” Bee replied, and so Mrs. Morton was reconciled to Mrs. Sniffe’s snub, and more than reconciled to her husband’s first love when she saw how kind and generous she was, spending her money so freely, and doing it all as if it were a great favor to herself rather than an act of charity to the poor woman, who returned to her boarding-house laden with more dry-goods for herself and children than she had seen during the entire period of her married life.
It was two days before Beatrice went again to her family on Eighth street, and then she found Mrs. Morton alone, and very much depressed, on account of a letter that morning received from her father.