but they didn’t count. Very likely they’d wear some shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs—nothing as resplendent as purple or red.
Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress ready-made. Oh, what’s the use of bothering with a tailor—when you’ve got a figger its easy to get a fit—the ready-made are intended for a perfect figger—except I have to have ’em all taken in at the waist—the average figger is so large waisted.
The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of purple, but they were white themselves—the joyous enthusiasm of the young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew purple would become her, and—for the thousandth time she tried to assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsey said he liked and not red. She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself.
Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above Maida’s.
At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady’s tongue clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbling in buttermilk. And then Grace
[134]
