you forgotten you’re going to the Traymore in a few days?” he asked her with a twinkle in his eye. “And what about the gray silk? Won’t it go with that? If not, we’ll get something better.”
Assisted by the saleswoman, they selected two beautiful collars of real lace, and half a dozen plain ones for commoner wear.
“Couldn’t you go with us?” asked Donald of the saleswoman as the purchase was concluded. “My aunt wishes to get a good many things, and neither she nor I is much used to shopping. We’d like to have your advice.”
“I’m sorry; I’d like to, but I’m not allowed to leave this counter,” said the woman with a kindly smile. “I’m head of this department, and they can’t get along without me this morning. But they have buyers in the office just for that purpose. You go up to the desk over on the east side just beyond the rotunda, and ask for a buyer to go around with you. Get Miss Brower if you can, and tell her the head of the lace department told you to call for her. She’ll tell you just what to get,” and she smiled again at Aunt Crete’s kindly, beaming face.
They went to the desk, and found Miss Brower, who, when she heard the message, took them smilingly under her wing. She knew that meant a good sale had been made, and there would be something in it for her. Besides, she had a kindly disposition, and did not turn up a haughty nose at Aunt Crete’s dumpy little figure.
“Now, just what do you want first?” she asked brightly.
“Everything,” said Donald helplessly. “We’ve only bought a lace collar so far, and now we want all the rest of the things to go with it. The only things we’ve decided on so far are two silk dresses, a black one and a silver-gray. How do we go about it to get them? Do they have them ready-made?”
“Nothing that would be quite suitable, I’m afraid, in silks. But we’ll go and see what there is in stock,” said the assistant with skilful eye, taking in Aunt Crete’s smiling, helpless face, lovely white hair, dumpy, ill-fitted figure, and all. “There might be a gray voile that would suit her. In fact, I saw one this morning, very simple and elegant, lined with gray silk, and trimmed with lace dyed to match. It is a beauty, and just reduced this morning to thirty dollars from sixty. I believe it will fit her.”
Aunt Crete gasped at the price, and looked at Donald; but he seemed pleased, and said: “That sounds good. Let’s go and see it. We’ll have a gray—what was it you called it—voile? Remember that name, Aunt Crete. You’re going to have a gray voile. But we want the silk too. Do they make things here? We want to go away in a few days, and would like to take them with us.”
“O, yes, they’ll make anything to order; and this time of year we’re not so busy. I guess you could get a ‘hurry-up’ order on it, and have it done in a couple of days; or it could be forwarded to you if it was not quite finished when you left.”
They stepped into the elevator, and in a trice were ushered into the presence of the rare and the imported. Aunt Crete stood in a maze of delight and wonder. All this was on exhibition just for her benefit, and she was Alice in Wonderland for the hour. Donald stood back with his arms folded, and watched her with satisfaction. One thing alone was wanted to complete it. He would have liked to have Luella up in the gallery somewhere watching also. But that he held in anticipation. Luella should be made to understand that she had done wrong in underrating this sweet, patient soul.
The gray voile was entirely satisfactory to the two shoppers. Donald recognized it as the thing many women of his acquaintance wore at the receptions he had attended in university circles. Aunt Crete fingered it wistfully, and had her inward doubts whether anything so frail and lovely, like a delicate veil, would wear; but, looking at Donald’s happy face, she decided not to mention it. The dress was more beautiful than anything she had ever dreamed of possessing. “But it won’t fit me,” she sighed as she and Miss Brower were on the way to the “trying-on” room, where the garment was to be fitted to her. “I’m so dumpy, you know, and Luella always says it’s no use to get me anything ready-made.”
“O, the fitter will make it fit,” said Miss Brower convincingly; and then, with a glance at the ample waist, whose old-fashioned lines lay meekly awry as if they were used to being put on that way and were beyond even discouragement: “Why don’t you wear one of those stiffened waists? There’s a new one on sale, has soft bones all around, and is real comfortable. It would make your dresses set a great deal better. If you like, I’ll go get one, and you can be fitted over it. You don’t like anything very tight, do you?”
“No,” said Aunt Crete in a deprecatory tone, “I never could bear anything real tight. That’s what puts Luella out so about me. But, if you say there’s a waist that’s comfortable, I should be so obliged if you’d get it. I’d be willing to pay any price not to look so dumpy.”
She felt that if it took the last cent she possessed, and made all her relatives angry with her, she must have something to fit her once.
Miss Brower, thus commissioned, went away, and returned very soon with the magical waist that was to transform Miss Lucretia’s “figger.” If Donald could have seen his aunt’s face when she was finally arrayed in the soft folds of the gray voile and was being pinned up and pinned down and pinned in and pinned out, he would have been fully repaid. Aunt Crete’s ecstasy was marred only by the fact that Luella could not see her grandeur. Actually being fitted in a department-store to a “real imported” dress! Could mortal attain higher in this mundane sphere?
When the fitting was pronounced done and Aunt Crete was about to don her discouraged shirt-waist once more, Miss Brower appeared in the doorway with a coat and skirt suit over her arm, made of fine soft black taffeta.
“Just put this on and let the gentleman see how he likes it,” she said. She had been out to talk over matters with Donald and have an understanding as to what was wanted. She had advised the taffeta coat and skirt for travelling, with an extra cloth coat for cool days. Aunt Crete, with the new dignity that consciousness of her improved figure gave her, rustled out to her nephew looking like a new woman, her face beaming.
That was a wonderful day. Aunt Crete retired again for the black taffeta to be altered a little, and yet again for a black and white dotted swiss, and a white linen suit, and a handsome black crêpe de chine, and then to have the measure taken for the silver-gray silk, which the head dressmaker promised could be hurried through. They bought a black chiffon waist and some filmy, dreamy white shirt-waists, simple and plain in design, with exquisite lace simply applied, fine hand-made tucks, and finer material. Miss Brower advised white linen and white lawn for morning wear at the seashore, and gave Aunt Crete confidence, telling how she had a customer, “a woman about as old as you, with just such lovely white hair,” who but yesterday purchased a set of white dresses for morning wear at the seashore. This silenced the thoughts of her sister’s horror at “White for you, Crete! What are you thinking of?” Never mind, she was going to have one good time, even if she had to put all her lovely finery away in a trunk afterwards, and never bring it out again, or—dreary thought—were made to cut it over for Luella sometime. Well, it might come to that, but at least she would enjoy it while it was hers.
Two white linen skirts, a handsome black cloth coat, several pairs of silk gloves, black and white, some undergarments dainty enough for a bride, a whole dozen pairs of stockings! How Aunt Crete rejoiced in those! She had been wearing stockings whose feet were cut out of old stocking legs for fifteen years. She couldn’t remember when she had had a whole new pair of stockings all her own. And then two new bonnets.
All these things were acquired little by little. It was while they were in the millinery
