only Louisa I want to see. The old Luckley place next to her home is going to be sold and I did so want to see it once more before it passed into the hands of strangers. Mary Luckley … she’s Mrs. Howard Flemming now and lives out west … was my dearest friend when I was a girl. We were like sisters. I used to be at the Luckley place so much and I loved it so. I’ve often dreamed of going back. Ma says I’m getting too old to dream. Do you think I am, Miss Shirley?”
“Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that. Oh, Miss Shirley, to think of seeing the gulf again. I haven’t seen it for fifteen years. The harbor is beautiful, but it isn’t the gulf. I feel as if I was walking on air. And I owe it all to you. It was just because Ma likes you she let me go. You’ve made me happy … you are always making people happy. Why, whenever you come into a room, Miss Shirley, the people in it feel happier.”
“That’s the very nicest compliment I’ve ever had paid me, Pauline.”
“There’s just one thing, Miss Shirley … I’ve nothing to wear but my old black taffeta. It’s too gloomy for a wedding, isn’t it? And it’s too big for me since I got thin. You see it’s six years since I got it.”
“We must try to induce your mother to let you have a new dress,” said Anne hopefully.
But that proved to be beyond her powers. Mrs. Gibson was adamant. Pauline’s black taffeta was plenty good for Louisa Hilton’s wedding.
“I paid two dollars a yard for it six years ago and three to Jane Sharp for making it. Jane was a good dressmaker. Her mother was a Smiley. The idea of you wanting something ‘light,’ Pauline Gibson! She’d go dressed in scarlet from head to foot, that one, if she was let, Miss Shirley. She’s just waiting till I’m dead to do it. Ah, well, you’ll soon be shet of all the trouble I am to you, Pauline. Then you can dress as gay and giddy as you like, but as long as I’m alive you’ll be decent. And what’s the matter with your hat? It’s time you wore a bonnet, anyhow.”
Poor Pauline had a lively horror of having to wear a bonnet. She would wear her old hat for the rest of her life before she would do that.
“I’m just going to be glad inside and forget all about my clothes,” she told Anne, when they went out to the garden to pick a bouquet of June lilies and bleeding-heart for the widows.
“I’ve a plan,” said Anne, with a cautious glance to make sure Mrs. Gibson couldn’t hear her, though she was watching from the sitting-room window. “You know that silver-gray poplin of mine? I’m going to lend you that for the wedding.”
Pauline dropped the basket of flowers in her agitation, making a pool of pink and white sweetness at Anne’s feet.
“Oh, my dear, I couldn’t… . Ma wouldn’t let me.”
“She won’t know a thing about it. Listen. Saturday morning you’ll put it on under your black taffeta. I know it will fit you. It’s a little long, but I’ll run some tucks in it tomorrow … tucks are fashionable now. It’s collarless, with elbow sleeves so no one will suspect. As soon as you get to Gull Cove, take off the taffeta. When the day is over you can leave the poplin at Gull Cove and I can get it the next weekend I’m home.”
“But wouldn’t it be too young for me?”
“Not a bit of it. Any age can wear gray.”
“Do you think it would be … right … to deceive Ma?” faltered Pauline.
“In this case entirely right,” said Anne shamelessly. “You know, Pauline, it would never do to wear a black dress to a wedding. It might bring the bride bad luck.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that for anything. And of course it won’t hurt Ma. I do hope she’ll get through Saturday all right. I’m afraid she won’t eat a bite when I’m away … she didn’t the time I went to Cousin Matilda’s funeral. Miss Prouty told me she didn’t… . Miss Prouty stayed with her. She was so provoked at Cousin Matilda for dying … Ma was, I mean.”
“She’ll eat… . I’ll see to that.”
“I know you’ve a great knack of managing her,” conceded Pauline. “And you won’t forget to give her her medicine at the regular times, will you, dear? Oh, perhaps I oughtn’t to go after all.”
“You’ve been out there long enough to pick forty bokays,” called Mrs. Gibson irately. “I dunno what the widows want of your flowers. They’ve plenty of their own. I’d go a long time without flowers if I waited for Rebecca Dew to send me any. I’m dying for a drink of water. But then I’m of no consequence.”
Friday night Pauline telephoned Anne in terrible agitation. She had a sore throat and did Miss Shirley think it could possibly be the mumps? Anne ran down to reassure her, taking the gray poplin in a brown paper parcel. She hid it in the lilac bush and late that night Pauline, in a cold perspiration, managed to smuggle it upstairs to the little room where she kept her clothes and dressed, though she was never permitted to sleep there. Pauline was not quite easy about the dress. Perhaps her sore throat was a judgment on her for deception. But she couldn’t go to Louisa’s silver wedding in that dreadful old black taffeta … she simply couldn’t.
Saturday morning Anne was at the Gibson house bright and early. Anne always looked her best on a sparkling summer morning such as this. She seemed to sparkle with it and she moved through the golden air like a slender figure on a Grecian urn. The dullest room sparkled, too … lived … when she came into it.
“Walking as if you owned the earth,” commented Mrs. Gibson sarcastically.
“So I do,” said Anne gayly.
“Ah, you’re very young,” said Mrs. Gibson maddeningly.
“‘I withhold not my heart from any joy,’” quoted Anne. “That is Bible authority for you, Mrs. Gibson.”
“‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.’ That’s in the Bible, too,” retorted Mrs. Gibson. The fact that she had so neatly countered Miss Shirley, B.A., put her in comparatively good humor. “I never was one to flatter, Miss Shirley, but that chip hat of yours with the blue flower kind of sets you. Your hair don’t look so red under it, seems to me. Don’t you admire a fresh young girl like this, Pauline? Wouldn’t you like to be a fresh young girl yourself, Pauline?”
Pauline was too happy and excited to want to be any one but herself just then. Anne went to the upstairs room with her to help her dress.
“It’s so lovely to think of all the pleasant things that must happen today, Miss Shirley. My throat is quite well and Ma is in such a good humor. You mightn’t think so, but I know she is because she is talking, even if she is sarcastic. If she was mad or riled she’d be sulking. I’ve peeled the potatoes and the steak is in the ice-box and Ma’s blanc mange is down cellar. There’s canned chicken for supper and a sponge cake in the pantry. I’m just on tenterhooks Ma’ll change her mind yet. I couldn’t bear it if she did. Oh, Miss Shirley, do you think I’d better wear that gray dress … really?”
“Put it on,” said Anne in her best school-teacherish manner.
Pauline obeyed and emerged a transformed Pauline. The gray dress fitted her beautifully. It was collarless and had dainty lace ruffles in
