“Yes, but you see I couldn’t appear in it again very well.”
“Any strange gentleman you mid meet in your journey might notice the set of it, I suppose. Fancy, men in love don’t think so much about how they look to other women.” It is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the speech.
“Well then, Dick,” she said, with good-humoured frankness, “I’ll own it. I shouldn’t like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even though I am in love. ’Tis our nature, I suppose.”
“You perfect woman!”
“Yes; if you lay the stress on ‘woman,’” she murmured, looking at a group of hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had gathered like female idlers round a bonnet-shop.
“But about the dress. Why not wear the one you wore at our party?”
“That sets well, but a girl of the name of Bet Tallor, who lives near our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pattern, though of miserably cheap stuff), and I couldn’t wear it on that account. Dear me, I am afraid I can’t go now.”
“O yes, you must; I know you will!” said Dick, with dismay. “Why not wear what you’ve got on?”
“What! this old one! After all, I think that by wearing my gray one Saturday, I can make the blue one do for Sunday. Yes, I will. A hat or a bonnet, which shall it be? Which do I look best in?”
“Well, I think the bonnet is nicest, more quiet and matronly.”