As for Susan, she went back to the plants, and hovered over them quite as lovingly, but more thoughtfully than before. She studied the delicately-veined leaves and delicately-tinted blossoms all the while, with a new light in her eyes. This small sweet-faced girl, who had looked to the plainly-attired, narrow-visioned Susan, like a carefully prepared edition of a late fashion-plate, had given her some entirely new ideas in regard to this question of dress. It seemed that there was a duty side to it that she had not canvassed. “What right have I to make her uncomfortable?” gentle Flossy had asked, speaking of her sister Kitty. Susan repeated the sentence to herself, substituting Ruth’s name for Kitty’s. Presently she went to her own room.
“Ruth,” she said, later in the day, when they were for a moment alone together “would you like to have me get a new dress for the tea-party?”
Tea-party was a new name for the social gathering, but it was what Susan had heard such gatherings called. Ruth hesitated, looked at the questioner doubtfully a moment, then realizing that here was one with whom she could be straightforward, said frankly, “Yes, I would, very much.”
“What would you like me to get?”
“I think you would look well in one of those dark greens that are almost like an ivy-leaf in tint. Do you know what I mean?”
Susan laughed. She did not take in the question; she was thinking that it was a singular and a rather pleasant coincidence that she should be advised to dress after the fashion of the ivy-leaf which had served for illustration in the morning.
“I don’t suppose I ever looked well in my life,” she said at last, smiling brightly. “Perhaps it would be well to try the sensation. If you will be so kind, I should like you to select and purchase a dress for me that shall be according to your taste, only remembering that I dress as plainly as is consistent with circumstances, from principle.”
When she was alone again, she said, with an amused smile curving her lip, “I must get rid of that dreadful stickiness, and flour will do it!” That is what the dear little thing said. “Dark green will do it for me, it seems. If I find that to be the case I must remember it.”
Ruth dressed for shopping with a relieved heart. She was one of those to whom shopping was an artistic pleasure, besides she had never had anyone, save herself, on which to exhibit taste. She was not sure that it would be at all disagreeable.
“She begins to comprehend the necessities of the position a little, I believe,” she said, meaning Susan. And she didn’t know that Flossy Shipley’s gentle little voice, and carefully chosen words, had laid down a solid plank of duty for her uncompromising sister to tread upon.