“Why, Aunt Phebe,” Paul exclaimed, “I am twenty-three, and Clarice is twenty-one. I look like a boy, I know, but this will age me some,” and he stroked the soft brown mustache, of which he was rather proud. “This was Clarice’s idea. I believe she thinks I look younger than she does, but I don’t. We are neither of us children. Some fellows are married when they are twenty. I shall be twenty-four, for we do not intend to be married until the middle of October. I mean to have you come to the wedding with mother. You have never been in Washington and you’ll like it. I shall have you stop at Willard’s. Mrs. Percy does not live far from there. You’ve heard of Willard’s?”
“I’d smile if I hadn’t,” Miss Hansford said, while Paul began to open a paper box which he had brought with him.
“You see,” he continued, as he untied the cords, “I wanted to bring you something from Europe. I found a creamy kind of shawl in Cairo,—the real thing, and no sham,—and after I was engaged I felt so happy that I wanted to give you something more to wear to my wedding, so I thought of a silk dress. Clarice picked it out for me at the Louvre in Paris. Here it is,” and he unrolled a pattern of grey silk, whose texture and quality Miss Hansford appreciated, although not much accustomed to fabrics like this. “Clarice said the color would be becoming to you and was just the thing. She knows what’s what,” he continued, gathering up the silk material in folds, just as the salesman had done at the Louvre.
He did not explain that when he spoke of inviting Miss Hansford to his wedding Clarice had at first objected and only been won over when she saw how much he wished it. It was not necessary to tell this, and he kept quoting Clarice, as if she had been prime mover in the matter. No woman is proof against a silk such as Paul was displaying, and Miss Hansford was not an exception.
“Oh, Paul,” she said, laying her hand upon the heavy folds which would almost stand alone, “what made you do this for an old woman like me, who never had but two silk gowns in her life, and both of ’em didn’t cost half as much as this, I know. It was kind in you and Clarice, too, I’m sure. Tell her I thank her, and I hope you will be happy.”
Her manner certainly had changed, mollified by the dress and the part Clarice had in it, and when Paul, emboldened by the change, ventured to say, “Clarice thinks you should have some little lace thingembob for your head such as mother wears,” she didn’t resent it, but replied, “I can find that in Boston. Neither you nor Clarice shall be ashamed of me if I go.”
“Of course, you’ll go,” Paul said, dropping the silk and throwing around her shoulders the shawl which had been his choice in Cairo. “Look in the glass and see if it isn’t a beauty.”
Miss Hansford admitted that it was a beauty, but on a very homely old stick, and Paul knew by her voice that the chords which had been a little out of tune were in harmony again. Suddenly it occurred to her that as she had not breakfasted, probably Paul had not either, and she urged him to stay, but he declined. He was to leave on the next boat, and there were some things he must attend to at the house. He should come to Oak City again in a few days, he said, and then bade her good-bye, while she folded up the shawl and dress, admiring the latter greatly, wondering if it were quite right for one who professed what she did to wear so expensive a silk, and if she were not backsliding a little. She did a good many things now which she would not have done when she first became a resident of the place. The world and the flesh were crowding her to the wall, and the devil, too, she sometimes feared, but she would keep her silk gown in spite of them all, and as she put it away in her bureau drawer she thought that as none of her immediate friends had anything like it they might disapprove.
“I don’t care much if they do. They haven’t chances to see things as I have,” she said, with a degree of complacency which would have amused one who knew that her superior chances “to see things” were comprised in the week she had spent in Boston years ago, and her frequent visits to the Ralston House, where, on Paul’s account, she was always a welcome guest.
And now the good days were drawing to a close, for Paul was going to be married. This in itself was bad enough, for with a wife he could never be the same to her, but worse than that, he was to marry Clarice Percy. This tarnished the lustre of the grey silk from Paris and marred the day she had thought so bright in the early morning.