“You’ll look sweet in it, Grace,” Mrs. Durland volunteered. “You think it isn’t cut too low?”
“It’s the very latest model, mother. I don’t believe you’ll think it too low when you see me in it. I tried it on at my lunch hour yesterday and a customer got her eye on it and did her best to coax me to let her have it. But I sold her another gown that cost twenty dollars more, so Shipley’s didn’t lose anything.”
“You get so many clothes, Grace,” Ethel interrupted again intent upon her embroidery. “I don’t just see what you can want with a dress like that.”
“Oh, this is for a special occasion. Miss Reynolds has asked me to dinner Tuesday. She’s entertaining for Mrs. Mary Graham Trenton, who’s to lecture here that night.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Mrs. Durland. “I read in the paper that Mrs. Trenton was to speak here. I’d never have thought of connecting her with Miss Reynolds!”
“They’ve never met, I think. A friend of Miss Reynolds’s in Boston wrote and asked her to see that Mrs. Trenton was properly looked after, so she’s putting her up and pulling off a dinner in her honor. I might say that she didn’t appear to be awfully keen about it. She’s asking Dr. Ridgely and Judge Sanders and Dr. Loomis with their ladies, so theology, law and medicine will be represented. She asked me, I suppose, because I happened to mention to her once that I had read Mrs. Trenton’s ‘Clues to a New Social Order.’ And it may be in her mind that as a poor working girl I represent the proletariat.”
“She may have thought that being a friend of Mr. Trenton’s it would be pleasant for Mrs. Trenton to meet you,” said Ethel sweetly.
“Thank you, sister, you’re certainly the little mind reader,” Grace replied.
“I’m sure it’s very kind of Miss Reynolds to ask you,” remarked Mrs. Durland hastily, fearing a clash between the sisters. “There are no finer people in town than the Sanders and I have always heard splendid things about Dr. Loomis and his wife. It’s a privilege to meet people like that. I hope you realize that a woman of Miss Reynolds’s position can have her pick of the town. She’s certainly paying you a great compliment, Grace.”
“I don’t understand Miss Reynolds at all,” said Ethel. “She’s the last woman in the world you’d think would take a creature like Mary Graham Trenton into her house.”