The time may come when you will wish to wear this dress that I have saved so carefully for you; and when that time comes you may also want a little money that perhaps you will not have, money for clothes, I mean. I give you this twenty-five dollars for your very own, to spend as your needs require. It is not much, but it may help you to look like other girls. Fathers do not always understand what girls need, but Mothers know. I earned this money myself, giving singing lessons to the blacksmith's daughter and you helped me by keeping store while I taught, so you can take added pleasure in spending it.
Mother.
Something happened right here that was to say the least unexpected: I, Page Allison, gave up and cried like a baby. I know I hadn't cried so since old Buster, my pointer, died. And Annie Pore, instead of bawling, which she would have been perfectly justified in doing, never shed a tear; but with that exalted look on her face, which she had worn from the time she opened the box, she actually comforted me by patting me on the back and smoothing my hair.
"Page, Page, it's all right; don't be so miserable," she said as she endeavored to soothe me. So I blew my blooming nose and made her go on trying on the dress. It was a wonderful fit, just a little too long for a girl of fifteen, but we hemmed it up in no time. Strange to say, although the dress was more than twenty years old, it was not out of style but cut very much according to the prevailing mode. The truth of the matter is that Dame Fortune is quite like the old preacher who wrote a barrel of sermons, and when he had preached them all, he just turned the barrel up-side-down and began again. Fashions and styles get put in the barrel only to appear again after so many years.
"Have you a catalogue for a mail-order house, Page? Because I want to spend my money right off."
"Yes, I'll get it for you just as soon as my nose dies down a little. I don't want Tweedles to know I've been crying. What are you going to get?"
"Plenty of middy blouses and a good skirt to wear with them, some dancing slippers and some kind of simple dress I can put on in the evening, if the money can be stretched to it."
I was sure it could with careful ordering; and in a few minutes I thought my nose would bear inspection, so I went back to 117 to get the catalogue. Tweedles was out visiting, so I did not have to run the gauntlet of their curiosity.
Annie and I soon found exactly the right things in my wonder book, and we had the letter written ordering the things before the warning bell rang for visiting to cease.
"I fancy Father would be awfully cut up if he could know I am spending all of this money on my clothes; but he needn't know anything about it. I can wear my old things during the holidays and next summer——"