THE DRESS PARADE
"Oh dear," sighed Dorothy, falling limply into a handsomely upholstered
rocker in the comfortable resting-room of the shop, half an hour after
they had left Miss Mingle, "I'm completely exhausted!" She carried
several parcels, which she dropped listlessly on a nearby couch, on which
Tavia was resting.
"How mildly you express it!" cried Tavia, "I'm just simply dead! Don't
the crowds and the lights and confusion tire one, though! I'll own up,
that for just one wee moment to-day, I thought of Dalton, and its
peaceful quiet and the blue sky and--those things, you know," she hastily
ended, always afraid of being sentimental.
"I shouldn't want to think that all my days were destined to be spent in
New York. It makes a lovely holiday place, but I like the country," said
Dorothy, as she watched a young girl, shabbily dressed, eating some fruit
from a bag.
Tavia watched her too. "At least, the monotony of the country can always
be overcome by simple pleasures, but here there is no escape to the
peaceful--the temptations are too many. For instance," Tavia jumped from
her restful position, and sat before a writing table, and the shabby
young girl who was eating an orange, stopped eating to stare at the
schoolgirl. "Who wouldn't just write to one's worst enemy, if there was
no one else, just to use these darling little desks!"
"And the paper is monogramed," exclaimed Dorothy, regaining an interest
in things. "What stunning paper!" She, too, drew up a chair to the dainty
mahogany table and grasping a pen said: "We simply must write to someone.
This is too alluring to pass by."
"Here goes one to Ned Ebony," and Tavia dipped the pen into the ink and
wrote rapidly in a large scrawling hand.
"Mine will be to--Aunt Winnie," said Dorothy, laughing.
The shabby girl finished her orange, and picking up a small bundle, took
one lingering look at the happy young girls at the writing desks and left
the resting room.
"Aren't we the frivolous things," said Tavia, "writing the most perfect
nonsense to our friends merely because we found a dainty writing table!"
"With the most generous supply of writing paper!" said Dorothy. "But the
couches and chairs in this room are too tempting to keep me at the
writing desk." Dorothy sealed her letter and again curled up in the
spacious rocking chair.
"And while we are resting, we can study art," exclaimed Tavia, gazing at
the oil paintings and tapestry that adorned the walls.
A woman, with a grand assortment of large bundles and small children,
tried to get them all into her arms at once, preparatory to leaving the
resting room, but found it so difficult that she sat down once more and
laughed good-naturedly, while the children scrambled about the place,
loath to leave such comfortable quarters. Dorothy watched with interest,
and wondered how any woman could ever venture out with so many small
children clinging to her for protection, to do a day's shopping. Tavia
was more interested in art at that moment.
"Why go to the art museums?" she asked, "we can do that part on our trip
right here and now; we only lack catalogues."
"And we can do nicely without them," said Dorothy, dragging her wandering
attention back to Tavia. "I can enjoy all these pictures without knowing
who painted them. We can have just five minutes more in this palatial
room, and then we simply must go on."
And five minutes after the hour, Dorothy persuaded Tavia to leave the
ideal spot, and, entering the elevator, they were whirled upward to the
dress parade.
Roped off from the velvet, carpeted sales floors, numerous statuesque
girls paraded about, dressed in garments to charm the eye of all
beholders--to lure the very short and stout person into purchasing a
garment that looked divine on a willowy six-foot model; or, a wee bit of
a lady into thinking that she can no longer exist, unless robed in a
cloak of sable. But neither Dorothy nor Tavia cared much for the lure of
the gorgeous garments, they were too awed at the moment to yearn for
anything. A frail, ethereal creature, with a face of such delicacy and
wistfulness, so dainty and graceful, with a little dimpled smile about
her lips, passed the country girls and after that the girls could see
nothing else in the room. They sat down and just watched her. A trailing
robe of black velvet seemed almost too heavy for her slender white
shoulders, and a large hat with snow white plume curling over the rim of
the hat and encircling her bare throat, like a serpent, framed her
flushed face.
"There," breathed Tavia, "is the prettiest face I've ever dreamed of
seeing."
"She's more than pretty, she has a soul," said Dorothy, reverently.
"There is something so wistful about her smile and the tired droop of her
shoulders. I feel that I could love her!"
"She has put on an ermine wrap over the velvet gown," said Tavia.
Shrinking behind Dorothy she said impulsively: "Dare we speak to her? It
must be the most wonderful thing in the world to have a face like that!
And to spend all her days just wearing beautiful gowns!"
"She wears them so differently from the others here," declared Dorothy.
"She's strikingly cool, so far beyond her immediate surroundings."
"I think she must be a princess," said Tavia, in a solemn voice, "no one
else could look like that and stroll about with such an air!"
"I think she is someone who has been wealthy and is now very poor," said
Dorothy, tenderly. "How she must detest being stared at all day long!
This work, no doubt, is all she is fitted for, having been reared to do
nothing but wear clothes charmingly."
"She's changing her hat now," said Tavia, watching the model as she was
arrayed in a different hat. "We might just walk past and smile. I shall
always feel unsatisfied if we cannot hear her voice."
Together they timidly stepped near the wistful-eyed girl with the flushed
face.
"You must grow so very tired," said Dorothy, sympathetically.
A cool stare was the only reply.
"Hurry with the boa, you poky thing," came from the red, pouting lips of
the wistful-eyed girl, ignoring Dorothy and Tavia as though they were
part of the building's masonry. "I ain't got all day to wait! Gotta show
ten more hats before closing. Hurry up there, you girls, you make me mad!
Now you hurry, or I'll report you!" and turning gracefully, she tilted
her chin to just the right angle, the shrinking, wistful smile appeared
on her lips, the tired droop slipped to her shoulders, all the air of
charm covered her like a mantle, and again she started down the strip of
carpet, leaving behind her two sadly disillusioned young girls.
"Let us go right straight home," said Dorothy. "One never knows what to
believe is real in this hub-bub place."
"We might have forgiven her anything," said Tavia, "if she had been
wistfully angry, or charmingly bossy; but to think that ethereal creature
could turn into just a plain, everyday mortal!"
"The flowers were mostly artificial, the bargain counters mere stopping
places for pickpockets, and the most beautiful girl was rude!" cried
Dorothy.
"We must be tired; all things can't be wrong," said Tavia,
philosophically.
"We'll take a taxi home," said Dorothy, "Come on."