"They will look handsome when they are on," said Dr. Sandford.
"No they won't; they will look common. I don't mean vulgar—you could not buy anything in bad taste—but they are just what anybody's child might wear."
"Then Mrs. Randolph's child might."
Mrs. Sandford gave him a look. "That is just the thing," she said. "Mrs. Randolph's child might not. I never saw anybody more elegant or more particular about the choice of her dress than Mrs. Randolph; it is always perfect; and Daisy's always was. Mrs. Randolph would not like these."
"Shall we change them, Daisy?" said the doctor.
I said "No."
"Then I hope they will wear out before Mrs. Randolph comes home," he said.
All this, somehow, made me uncomfortable. I went off to the room which had been given to me, where a fire was kept; and I sat down to think. Certainly, I would have liked the other coat and hat better, that I had rejected; and the thought of the rich soft folds of that silky merino were not pleasant to me. The plaid I had bought did wear a common look in comparison. I knew it, quite as well as Mrs. Sandford; and that I had never worn common things; and I knew that in the merino, properly made, I should have looked my mother's child; and that in the plaid my mother would not know me. Was I right? was I wrong? I knelt down before the fire, feeling that the straight path was not always easy to find. Yet I had thought I saw it before me. I knelt before the fire, which was the only light in the room, and opened the page of my dear little book that had the Bible lessons for every day. This day's lesson was headed, "That ye adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things."
The mist began to clear away. Between adorning and being adorned, the difference was so great, it set my face quite another way directly. I went on. "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ."