"Well," says Mis' Toplady majestic, "they'll have it, won't they? We'll tell them which is which—only we'll all be wearing our own!"
Like lightning we decided. Each lady ripped her own dress off its wire form and scuttled for up-stairs. I took mine too, and headed with them; and at the turn I met Marjorie Mayhew, running down the stairs.
"Oh!" she says, kind of excited and kind of ashamed. "Do you think it'd spoil your exhibit if I took—if I wore—that rose dress—"
"No, child," I says. "Go right down and get it. That won't spoil the exhibit. The exhibit," I says, "is going to be exhibited on."
We were into our clothes in no time, hooking each other up, laughing like girls.
The first of us was just beginning to appear, when the two big cars came breathing up to the gate.
In came the Hewitts, and land—in one glance I saw there was nothing about them that was like what we'd always imagined—nothing grand or sweeping or rustling or cold. I guess that kind of city folks has gone out of fashion, never to come back. The Hewitts didn't seem like city folks at all—they seemed just like folks. It made a real nice surprise. And we all got to be folks, short off. For when I ushered them into my parlor, there were all the wire dress-forms setting around with nothing whatever on.
"My land," I says, "we might as well own right up to what we done," I says. And I told them, frank. And I dunno which enjoyed it the most, them or us.
The minute I saw him, I knew him. I mean The Nice Voice. I'd have known him by his voice if I hadn't been acquainted with his face, but I was. He was the picture that wasn't on Miss Marjorie Mayhew's dresser any longer—and, even more than the picture, he looked like what you mean when you say "man." When I was introduced to him I wanted to say: "How do you do. Oh! I'm glad you look like that. She deserves it!"
But even if I could, I'd have been struck too dumb to do it. For I caught his name—and he was the only son of the Hewitts, and heir-evident to all his folks.