The maid looked at her mistress. 'Miss Foster will ring, Benson, if she wants you'—said Miss Manisty; and the black-robed elderly maid, breathing decorous fashion and the ways of 'the best people,' turned, gave a swift look at Miss Foster, and left the room.
'Are you sure, my dear? You know she would make you tidy in no time. She arranges hair beautifully.'
'Oh quite—quite sure!—thank you,' said the girl with the same eagerness.
'I will be ready,—right away.'
Then, left to herself, Miss Foster hastily opened her box and took out some of its contents. She unfolded one dress after another,—and looked at them unhappily.
'Perhaps I ought to have let cousin Izza give me those things in Boston,' she thought. 'Perhaps I was too proud. And that money of Uncle Ben's—it might have been kinder—after all he wanted me to look nice'—
She sat ruefully on the ground beside her trunk, turning the things over, in a misery of annoyance and mortification; half inclined to laugh too as she remembered the seamstress in the small New England country town, who had helped her own hands to manufacture them. 'Well, Miss Lucy, your uncle's done real handsome by you. I guess he's set you up, and no mistake. There's no meanness about him!'
And she saw the dress on the stand—the little blonde withered head of the dressmaker—the spectacled eyes dwelling proudly on the masterpiece before them.—
Alack! There rose up the memory of little Mrs. Lewinson at Florence—of her gently pursed lips—of the looks that were meant to be kind, and were in reality so critical.
No matter. The choice had to be made; and she chose at last a blue and white check that seemed to have borne its travels better than the rest. It had looked so fresh and striking in the window of the shop whence she had bought it. 'And you know, Miss Lucy, you're so tall, you can stand them chancy things'—her little friend had said to her, when she had wondered whether the check might not be too large.
And yet only with a passing wonder. She could not honestly say that her dress had cost her much thought then or at any other time. She had been content to be very simple, to admire other girls' cleverness. There had been influences upon her own childhood, however, that had somehow separated her from the girls around her, had made it difficult for her to think and plan as they did.