N.B.--I must get over apologizing to myself when I buy respectable
clothes. It savours too much of Aunt Lot's old habit of saying, every
time she bought a best gown, and I remonstrated with her for the colour
(it was always black in those days; since she's married the Reverend
Jabez she's taken to greens), "When I consider that a black dress would
be suitable to be buried in, it seems less like a vain luxury."
We were admiring the dainty muslins, but only in the "abstract," when I
looked up, conscious that some one was coming directly toward us, and saw
Sylvia Latham crossing the shop from the door, her rapid, swinging gait
bringing her to us before short-sighted Miss Lavinia had a chance to
raise her lorgnette.
Sylvia was genuinely glad to see us, and she expressed it both by look
and speech, without the slightest symptom of gush, yet with the confiding
manner of one who craves companionship. I had, in fact, noticed the same
thing during our call the afternoon before.
"Well, and what are we buying to-day?" asked Miss Lavinia, clearing her
voice by a little caressing sound halfway between a purr and a cluck, and
patting the hand that lingered affectionately on hers.
"I really--don't--know," answered Sylvia, smiling at her own hesitation.
"Mamma says that if I do not get my clothes together before people begin
to come back from the South, I shall be nowhere, so she took me with
her to Mme.
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