"I'll get my dress from his store," she said mentally. "I shall wear it with the greater pleasure that he has handled it. My patronage will be to him but as the drop to the ocean," she said with a little bitterness, "but it will be a sweet thought to me that I have contributed even one drop to the flood of his prosperity."
So she entered Christian Van Pelt's trade-palace, and said, in answer to the smart clerk's look of inquiry, "I am looking for a silk that will do for the evening and also for the street—something a little out of style, perhaps, might answer."
"We have some bargains in such silks—elegant dress-patterns at a third of what they cost us in Paris. Step this way;" and Mary found herself going back and back through the spacious building, with her image advancing to meet her.
In a few seconds the counter was strewn with silks at most enticing figures, and the clerk showed them off to such advantage, gathering them so dexterously into elegant folds, shifting them so skillfully in the brilliant gas-light, persuading the lady, in the mean while, in such a clever, lawyer-like way: "These cost us in Paris three times the money I am offering them for, and they are but very little passé; there is an extraordinary demand for them; they are going like wildfire; country merchants are ordering them by the score; we sent eighty pieces to Chicago, to one house, yesterday, and fifty patterns to Omaha this morning; one hundred and ten we last week shipped to the South; the whole lot will perhaps be sold by to-morrow," etc.—that poor Mary felt like a speculator on the verge of a great chance. So she decided on a light-green brocade, and could not gainsay the smooth-tongued clerk as he assured her, while tying the bundle, that she had secured a very handsome and elegant dress at a great bargain.
The next day Mary and her mother spent in studying and discussing the latest fashion-plates, but the elaborate descriptions of expensive costumes plunged the girl into another state of bewilderment and slough of despond. She heartily regretted having accepted the invitation. She began to dread the party as an execution—to shrink from exhibiting herself to Christian with the fine ladies and gentlemen who would form the company at Mrs. Van Pelt's. However, the dress was cut and made, and in this there was a fair degree of success, for necessity had taught these women considerable skill in the use of the scissors and needle. The dress was trimmed with some handsome old lace that had been in the mother's family for years. Mrs. Trigillgus pronounced the dress very handsome as she spread it on the bed and stepped off to survey it, and even the despondent Mary took heart, and as she surveyed her image in the mirror at the conclusion of her toilet for the important evening, she felt a degree of complacency toward herself—a feeling of admiration even.
"You look like a snowdrop, dear," said the mother fondly; and the comparison was not inapt, for the young girl's Saxon complexion and fair hair were in pretty contrast with the lace-decked silk of delicate green falling about her.
As she had no attendant, she went early to Mrs. Van Pelt's, feeling at liberty to be unceremonious; and she thought, with a beating heart, that Christian would be her escort home. Mrs. Van Pelt was not in the parlor when Mary entered, but Christian received her kindly, though with a slight embarrassment that embarrassed her. She tried to keep the love-flicker from her eyes and the love-tremor from her voice as she sat there alone with the man she loved, trying to reply indifferently to his indifferent remarks, and wondering if he could not hear the beating of her heart. She was greatly relieved at the entrance of Mrs. Van Pelt. When this lady had kissed her guest, she stepped off a few paces and looked the girl over.
"Your dress is very becoming, my dear," she said, "but why did you get a brocade? Don't you know that brocades are out of style? Nobody wears brocades; and they are not trimming with lace at all. I wish you had advised with me."
The blood rushed to Mary's face. Though she did not turn her eyes to Christian's, she knew that they were looking at her—that he was noting her confusion and comprehending its cause. "He knows why I have bought this brocade," was her thought, "and he knows that I am humiliated in having my poverty held up to his view. Of course Christian knows that I am poor, and he must know, as a consequence, that I wear poor clothes. I can endure that he should know this in a general way, while I shrink from having the details of my poverty revealed to him. I would not wish my patched gaiters and darned stockings held up for his inspection."
Mary hesitated a moment before replying to Mrs. Van Pelt's criticism. Then, with a feeling that it was better to acknowledge a poverty of which both her companions were cognizant than an ignorance of style, she said, with a slight kindling of the eye, "I decided on this dress from economical considerations, and the lace is some which my mother's great-grandmother brought from Holland.—I have reminded them, at least, that I had a grandfather," she thought.