"Well, well, well!" Mrs. Drake sank into a chair and folded her slender hands with a vigorous slap of the palms. "Nobody under high heavens can ever tell what you will do or what you won't do," she wailed. "I never wanted anything for myself as much as for you to have that dress, and—" Her voice ended in a sigh of impatience.
With rapid, angry fingers the seamstress was disrobing the slender form roughly, jerking hooks, ribbons, and bits of lace. "Huh, huh!" she kept sniffing, as she filled her mouth with pins. "I might as well not have stopped, but it don't matter; it don't make a bit o' difference. You couldn't have it now if you offered me double the cost."
Dolly seemed oblivious of what was passing. Getting out of the garment, she quickly put on her skirt and waist, noting as she did so that her father was seated behind her on the window-sill, nursing his knee and chewing and spitting vigorously on the porch floor.
"What a bunch o' rowin' she-cats!" she heard him chuckling. "An' about nothin' more important than a flimsy rag that looks like a hollyhock bush with arms an' legs."
Without noticing him Dolly hurriedly finished buttoning her waist, and, throwing on her sun-bonnet, she dashed out of the room.
"I don't blame you for losin' patience, Miss Stella," Mrs. Drake sighed, "but I've thought it out. It is as plain as the nose on your face. You know an' I know she was tickled to death with it till she met Mr. Mostyn in the yard just now. Mark my words, he said something to her about the style of it. Maybe it's not exactly the latest wrinkle accordin' to town notions."
"Yes, that's it." Miss Munson paused in her flurried efforts to restore the dress to its wrapper. The twine hung from her teeth as she stood glaring. "Yes, he's at the bottom of it. As if a man of his stripe an' character would be a judge. I have heard a few items about him if you all haven't. Folks talk about 'im scand'lous in Atlanta. They say he leads a fast life down there. You'd better keep Dolly away from 'im. He won't do. He has robbed good men an' women of their money in his shady deals, an' folks tell all sorts o' tales about 'im."
"Thar you go ag'in," Tom Drake broke in, with a hearty laugh. "First one thing an' then another. You would swear a man's life away one minute an' hug it back into 'im the next. Now, I kin prove what I say, an' you both ought to be ashamed. Mostyn not only told Dolly that dress was the purtiest thing he ever seed, but he told me to come in here an' make 'er take it."
The twine fell from the spinster's mouth. She eyed Mrs. Drake steadily. Mrs. Drake rose slowly to her feet. She went to the dressmaker and touched her tragically on the arm. She said something in too low a voice for her husband to catch it.
"Do you think that's it?" Miss Munson asked, a womanly blaze in her eyes.