"What are you going to wear?" asks Alice, and her literal question brings me very suddenly down from the rose-coloured clouds on which I am floating. My jaw drops, and I stare at her blankly.
"I never thought of that," I say, slowly; "I was thinking of the dancing, the fun, and———"
"Have you not a single ball dress?" asks Milly, rather cruelly, I think, for she knows as well as I do how the governor mulcts us in pin-money.
"A ball dress!" I repeat, derisively. "Indeed, you may thank your stars that I have come in a gown at all, and not a petticoat body, for there is so much trouble to get any clothes at Silverbridge, that very soon, I believe, we shall have to do with none at all."
"Of course you must have a dress," says Milly, calmly: "had you not better write to Howell and James, and order one?"
Howell and James! When even that refuge of the destitute, William Whiteley, is far, far beyond me! Clearly, Milly has forgotten the days of her youth.
"I shall not appear," I say, miserably; "I could not dance and enjoy myself with an awful bill hanging over me all the evening, and knowing what it would cost mother, so I shall be ill the night of the party, unless you think a costume à la squaw, consisting of a pearl necklace and a pair of boots, would be full dress enough."
"It would be quite full enough," says Alice, "and extremely suited to the weather, only Mrs. Grundy might object."
"If you had only been at Silverbridge at the last bill row," I say, sinking into still deeper dejection, "you would not feel inclined to laugh at the prospect of another."
"Tell us about it," says my lovely sister; "these rows were terrifying things, but very amusing to think of after."
"The last was amusing," I say, laughing heartily, in spite of the
