The Heart of Arethusa Part 22

"I'm glad you know something about it," said Elinor, really relieved.

"I was afraid perhaps you didn't, and you would hardly have the time to learn. And, Arethusa dearest," tactfully feeling her way, fearing to spoil the girl's innocent happiness in the garment, "was that white dress you wore last night your very best?"

"Yes, ma'am." The eager face lighted still more. "And it's the lowest necked dress I ever did have, and it has the shortest sleeves! They're nearly up to my elbow. Aunt 'Liza didn't want it made that way, so low, nor so thin, either; because she said I wouldn't be able to wear my underwear with it, and she's afraid it's dangerous for me to take it off. But I rolled it up last night and in at the neck, and it didn't show very much. Did it?"

Elinor and Ross were almost equally affected by this speech.

"Shades of the summer of seventy-six!" was his rather inappropriate exclamation.

And Elinor's expression seemed to Arethusa to be one of incredulity, so she turned back her s.h.i.+rtwaist cuff to prove her statement, and showed the end of a long, knit sleeve.

"I don't like to wear it a single bit," she said, "but Aunt 'Liza makes me. I have to put it on when we have the first heavy frost and I can't take it off until the tenth of May."

"I am becoming more and more convinced that Miss Eliza's peculiar talents are entirely lost in the place she occupies," replied Ross, with sincerity.

But the white dress, low as its proud owner seemed to consider it, and as thin, and in spite of Miss Let.i.tia's loving effort expended on it for just such occasions as parties, would hardly serve for the Chestnuts' dinner-dance, thought Elinor.

And so, ere very much time were sped, Arethusa discovered Miss Asenath to have been a true prophet. She was to have another Party Frock. She and Elinor started off immediately to get It; but they had to get It ready-made, for there was not near enough time before the Party for a dressmaker's services to have accomplished the sort of Frock that Elinor wanted Arethusa to have.

They went in the automobile, to Arethusa's great delight, and the palatial establishment where it stopped, and which Elinor told her had the prettiest dresses in town to offer in just such emergencies as this, was so enormous a place and so filled to overflowing with scurrying people, that Arethusa wondered if every human being in Lewisburg had not come a-buying this morning, and right in this particular shop. She was not used to stores where she b.u.mped into somebody at every other step. She apologized several times from the front door to the elevator, for such collisions; because her delighted eyes would insist in wandering to the bewilderment of riches displayed on every side, instead of finding her a pa.s.sage through the crowd. She could not understand how Elinor could pa.s.s them all so calmly by, looking so straight ahead. Had she not been afraid of losing her, Arethusa would have stopped, more than once, for a little closer view.

They went up in the elevator to the third floor, and the elevator was another new sensation for Arethusa. There were no elevators within miles of the Farm.

The whole third floor was entirely given over to ready-made garments of every description; cloaks and suits and dresses of every conceivable variety of cloth and color, hanging carelessly over tables and chairs, and neatly displayed inside lighted gla.s.s cases, and girls were rus.h.i.+ng about carrying still more piled in their arms. There were more clothes then Arethusa had imagined could ever have been made, right here on the one floor of this huge shop.

To the floor-walker who stepped up to greet them, Elinor conveyed her desire to buy a dress for Arethusa; "And I should like Miss Rosa, Mr.

Wells, if she's not too busy."

Mr. Wells, bowing grandly from the waist, ushered them into a small room hung all around with mirrors, and disappeared. Then he reappeared in a few moments to announce that Miss Rosa would be with them very shortly, if Mrs. Worthington would be so kind as to wait.

Arethusa was simply overcome by the rapidity with which events moved forward, to carry her with them. Speech was an impossibility. She could only follow Elinor silently.

She sat and gazed about her in the little mirrored room. Her quaint figure was repeated again and again on all sides in a very bewildering way; and she noted that the hat of each Arethusa had somehow got crooked far down over one ear. She straightened it immediately. There were many Elinors in the mirrors also, and Arethusa admired the grace of those reflections with unaffected showing of her admiration. She especially admired the soft sweep of Elinor's long stole of moleskin.

There was no more envy in her regard of the difference of their appearance in these many unmistakable evidences of it than there had been when they had both been dressed for the Anniversary the night before. Arethusa rejoiced that Elinor was such a Beautiful Creature; and it was Perfect Bliss to be with her and watch her lovely clothes, without worrying about herself in any way.

Miss Rosa did not keep them waiting long, and at Elinor's request when she did come, she flitted away in a business-like manner that spelled a knowledge of what was wanted, to return bearing an armful of color; pale blues and pinks and lavenders and whites and deeper creams, in the softest of satins and silks and chiffons and lace. Among all this loveliness was glimpsed by Arethusa a fleck of green.

"Mother," this whispered to Elinor, as Miss Rosa in her modish and well-fitting black crepe de chine and her air of knowing what she was about, was just a trifle awe-inspiring, "do you suppose that would be a Green Dress?"

But Miss Rosa heard the whisper. She smiled in a friendly way at Arethusa, for Miss Rosa was a kindly soul, and produced from the very bottom of her pile of beautiful things a Green Frock of the identical shade so beloved by Arethusa.

Arethusa drew in her breath with a sharp, little sound. "Oh, that is the One I want! Oh, Mother, may I have...."

But she had had too long a training by Miss Eliza for it to desert her with too great a suddenness. The dress looked neither sensible nor durable when Miss Rosa held it spread out to plainer view; in fact, it had every possible appearance of being neither. And it was so wonderful a ma.s.s of chiffon and silk and lace that Arethusa began to remember sundry lessons in economy also; she feared its cost would prove terrific. She had never seen anything nearly so Wonderful in the shape of a Gown before. Then too, those caustic remarks of so positive a nature concerning green with her red hair, which Miss Eliza had spoken so often in her hearing, began to worm themselves into her consciousness.

The happy expression, roused by the first sight of this creation, faded quite noticeably.

"What's the matter?" inquired Elinor. "I think that's the dress of all dresses for you, dear. If you like it. Don't you, Miss Rosa?"

Miss Rosa nodded. "Yes, indeed, Miss Worthington has the very hair and eyes for this, and the skin as well."

Then did Arethusa's spirits soar to touch heaven once more. She turned such an illumined face to Elinor as Elinor had never seen; she was all aquiver in her sudden joy.

"Aunt 'Senath was right! Darling Aunt 'Senath was right! She said not everybody would be like Aunt 'Liza; that some people would be sure to think green was all right with my hair! Aunt 'Liza never has let me have anything but blue, and I've wanted a green dress for a thousand years. But this one looks so...." she paused uncertainly, and reddened.

She did not like to mention its cost, since Elinor was making her a gift, but Miss Eliza was a good teacher.

"Expensive?" finished Elinor, laughing. "I don't imagine it is. But I'll do the worrying about that. If you want it, you may have it. It rests with you to say."

Arethusa blushed more deeply, but it was a radiant blush, even if embarra.s.sed, for Elinor's words, if intended as words of correction, were not spoken in the tone Arethusa a.s.sociated with corrections. She fingered at the Green Dress, almost caressingly. To own this Gorgeous Thing for her very own!

"Suppose we try it on," suggested Miss Rosa, amused at Arethusa's nave joy.

Arethusa's coat was off before the kindly suggestion was quite finished, then she looked at Miss Rosa.

Elinor read the hesitating thought. "It's all right," she said. "Miss Rosa must fit it for you, you know."

So Miss Rosa whisked off Arethusa's s.h.i.+rtwaist for her, and her skirt, and even manipulated that uncompromisingly unbeautiful protection which Miss Eliza insisted was all that kept the healthy Arethusa from dying of pneumonia in the winter season, in such a very capable way that it could not possibly show; and slipped the dainty gown over the girl's ruddy head. And it fitted her as if it had been made especially to her measurement.

Arethusa stared into the mirror directly before her, and into the ones all around her, twisting and turning to see every inch of her back, lost in ecstasy at the contemplation of her glorified self in these Wonderful Reflections. Even the heavy black lace shoes, ugly shoes from a country store, which showed so plainly below her green skirt, had no sort of power to spoil for Arethusa the general effect of loveliness.

It was the most Beautiful Dress in the world, she was sure.

The skirt billowed and flowed around her in soft generous folds of pale green chiffon and lace draped over an underskirt of green silk, and caught to it here and there with bunches of tiny flowers in odd, bright colors. The waist had a high, soft girdle of the green silk, and some of the little flowers were sewed around one side of it against the gathers of the skirt; and a tight little bunch of them was right in the middle of her back at the very top of the girdle, from which hung narrow, flowing sash-ends that were tied into the fulness of the skirt with other wee bunches of the flowers. Some of these flowers were nestled about in the lace on the upper part of the waist as if they had grown there, and some caught up the short lace sleeves.

"How do you like it?" asked Elinor. It was really rather a superfluous question.

"I _love_ it!" burst from Arethusa. "I think it is Perfectly Beautiful!" Then she turned around. "But I just know, Mother, that Aunt 'Liza won't like it at all."

"Why, what on earth has Miss Eliza to do with it?"

"You see," seriously, "she has always said just what I should wear, and she tells Aunt 't.i.tia just how to make them."

"I understand, dear, but you're in Lewisburg now; and ... I can't see possibly how Miss Eliza could have a single objection to make."

But Arethusa knew only too well.

"Couldn't I have a guimpe with it?" she suggested hopefully; "if I had a guimpe, it would look different."

It would indeed!

"A guimpe!" echoed both Elinor and Miss Rosa.

Arethusa nodded, and turned once more to the mirror, "It's the sleeves she wouldn't like," she lifted one to show its lack as a sleeve from Miss Eliza's point of view, "and the neck, besides. It's ever so much lower than my white dress, I always used to wear guimpes with dresses like this. I don't mean just like this," added hastily, for a blunder had been committed, "but when it had sleeves as short, and didn't come up any higher."

"I never heard of such a thing," declared Elinor. "And, Arethusa, I can't believe that even Miss Eliza would make you wear a guimpe with an evening dress!"

But then Elinor did not know Miss Eliza.

And, "Anything on earth that you would do to that dress, Mrs.