Then the curtain fell on the third act and the soft thunder of applause spent itself and the lights leaped up. And immediately I was aware of a conspicuously high-pitched voice at the door of the box, a voice which carried with it some consciousness of elaborate self-possession.
"Really!" said the voice. "Of all people! My dear Hannah—and Calliope Marsh! You butterflies—"
I looked up, and at first all that I saw was a gown which "laid smooth down—and then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft—and didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong"; a gown that was "dressmaker made"; a gown, in short, such as Lydia Eider "always hed on." And there beside us stood Lydia Eider herself, wearing some exquisite, priceless thing of pink chiffon and old lace, with a floating, glittering scarf on her arms.
I remember that she seemed some splendid, tropic bird alight among our nun-like raiment. A man or two, idling attendance, were rapidly and perfunctorily presented to us—one, who was Lydia's adopted brother, showing an amused cordiality to Henry. And I saw how the glasses were instantly turned from pit and boxes toward her—this girl who, with Calliope and Hannah, had been cast in one mold of prettiness and proportion and who alone of the three, as I thought, had come into her own.
And Lydia said:
"Will you tell me how on earth Grandma Hawley came to send me a pink silk dress to-day? You didn't know! But she did—on my honor. It came this afternoon by the man I sent out to you, Hannah. And so decently made—how can it have happened? Made for me too—positively I can wear it—though nearly everything I have is pink. But how did Grandma come to do it? And where did she get it? And why—"
She talked on for a little, elaborating, wondering. But I fancy that she must have thought us uncommonly stupid, for none of us had the faintest suggestion to offer. We listened, and murmured a bit about the health of Grandma Hawley, and Henry said some hesitating thanks, in which Hannah barely joined, for the wedding gift of the rug, but none of us gave evidence. And at last, with some gracious word, Lydia Eider left the box, trailing her pink chiffon skirts and saying the slight good-by which utterly forgets one.
But when she had gone, Calliope laughed, softly and ambiguously and wholly contagiously, so that Hannah, whose face had begun to pucker like a child's, unwillingly joined her. And then, partly because of Henry's reassuring, "Now then, now then, Hannah," and partly at the touch of his big hand and in the particular, delicious embarrassment which comes but once, Hannah tremulously spoke her conclusion:
"I don't care," she said, "I don't care! I'm glad—for Gramma."
Calliope sat smiling, looking, in her delicate color and frailty and the black and white of her dress, like some one on a fan, exquisitely and appropriately painted.