“Oh, yes, I have; that is the very latest style; but you see the trouble is I haven’t the lace. Mother used to have a piece of nice lace that she lent to us girls on occasions, but it was in that dreadful trunk that was lost in the railroad accident. It seems sometimes as though nearly everything we had that was worth much was in that burned-up trunk.”
“I wonder if I haven’t a bit that would do for this dress,” the elder lady said, thoughtfully. “I believe I have, if there is enough for the sleeves, too. Suppose you climb up to that highest shelf in my closet and get the little green box at the left corner, and we’ll measure and see.”
Florence made a vigorous protest and, failing, went with a reluctance that covered dismay. What had she done now! She heard herself trying to argue with Aunt Elsie over a strip of cheap lace to prove, without hurting her feelings, that it was not suitable for the dress in question. What if she should fail and be obliged to accept it?
“I won’t do it!” she told herself, firmly, as she climbed after the green box. “She has helped me a lot, and I’m thankful, but I simply can’t reward her by tricking myself out in her old cotton finery; not if she were father’s mother, instead of his half-sister. Oh, dear! If Ray were only at home, she would help me out of this scrape. I don’t care! We can’t sacrifice everything in order to save her feelings. I’m just going to tell her that I can’t use it.”
But in less than half an hour from that resolute moment this same maiden was standing before the sideboard mirror, aglow and eyes very bright, “tricked out” in Aunt Elsie’s “finery,” and what she was telling her was this:
“Oh, Aunt Elsie! I never saw anything so lovely in all my life! It is as fine as a cobweb, and so wide! Dear me! I should like to have Frances Powell see this; she thinks she has the most wonderful piece of old lace in the world; it was her grandmother’s and it is beautiful, but nothing like this! May I just show it to her some time? Of course, I do not mean on the dress; I couldn’t think of wearing it. Oh, I wouldn’t for the world! It is much too fine for me.”
Said Aunt Elsie, stepping back to view it with a critic’s eye: “It would look better, I believe, dropped a little lower on the shoulder; just let me try it. There, isn’t that more graceful? Stand still, dear, until I pin it all around, then I can sew it on in a minute. Nonsense, child, of course you will wear it; that is what it is for; I’m glad there is enough for the sleeves; I was a little bit afraid—but there is plenty.”
The lace went to the party that same evening, accompanied by a radiant girl, who, as she surveyed herself in the mirror confided to Jean that, thanks to Aunt Elsie, she felt herself to be really well dressed for the first time in her life.
“The idea!” Jean said, “when you have worn that same dress dozens of times.”
“Yes, but you see it has been glorified; it never looked like this before.”