THE “GLORIFIED” DRESS
“OH, DEAR!” Florence groaned, as her ear caught the sound; “if Aunt
Elsie is coming in here I may as well give up; I can’t sew, with her
looking on. Why can’t she stay in her room when we have given up
the best one in the house for her use!”
“Good-by,” said Jean, with a spring toward the door that led to the
kitchen. “I belong to the culinary department, thank goodness.
Poor Florrie!”
The thump of the crutch stopped and presently the door of
the dining-room swung back to admit Aunt Elsie.
“I thought likely you were sewing,” she said, cheerfully. “I brought
my thimble and spectacles, thinking there might be something
that I can do.”
Florence made haste to explain. “Oh, thank you, but this is just some
fussy sewing that I have to do myself; I’m fixing over an old dress,
and of all stupid tasks I consider that the worst.”
“It is pretty,” said her aunt, examining the goods with critical eye,
“and the color just suits you, doesn’t it? You will have to hem it
over again, won’t you? That is done by hand, of course?”
“I’m sorry to say that it is,” Florence admitted, with a sigh. “The
machine won’t do for this thin stuff; I tried a little bit and
it looked horrid.”
“Do you ever hem with ravellings? In goods of this kind they
generally do nicely; here is a scrap that would be just right
to ravel out; suppose I hem a little bit, and see if it looks well?”
Florence gave reluctant consent, with doubt in her heart; she was
what Jean called “fussy” about her work, and she had never sewed
with “ravellings”; she resolved to watch closely and be ready
with objections at the earliest possible moment. But while
the volunteer was choosing a needle Derrick came ready to do
the errand that had been asked of him, and to ask innumerable
questions. Just what was it she wanted at Wheeler’s and where was the
thing to be matched. Must he undertake to match it, or would the
clerk do it for him. Just exactly how much did she want, and what
would it probably cost. If he did not find it at Wheeler’s was he
to go elsewhere, and if so, where. Florence had to hunt through boxes
and baskets for the desired samples, then go to her mother for advice
as to measurements, then find her pocketbook for Derrick to use,
as he announced himself “dead broke.” When she at last turned
from him to give belated attention to ravellings her remarks were
all exclamatory:
“You don’t mean that you have done it! Have you been all round that
skirt already? Why it is only a few minutes since you began! Do look
at it! The stitches are not there at all! I mean I can’t find one of
them! How perfectly lovely! I just dreaded that hem! Aunt Elsie,
I believe you are a witch!”
“It doesn’t take long to hem with ravellings,” Aunt Elsie said when
she was given a chance to speak. “I saw the stitches weren’t going
to grin, and as you were busy with Derrick I pushed right on. Now
suppose you let me put in these sleeves? I’m a master hand
at sleeves; I took lessons how to do them, of a first-class
dressmaker’s.”
Florence, who was not a “master hand” and had dreaded the sleeves
almost as much as the hem, relinquished them with a relieved sigh,
and boasted of them the next time she made a dash to the kitchen
to consult her mother.
“Don’t you think, they came right the first time! and even Ray has to
rip them out once. She goes at things as though she had been
a dressmaker all her life; and she’s quick, too.”
When the garment reached the trying-on stage, and Florence was posing
before the sideboard mirror, her aunt, who had worked steadily and
skillfully on other than hems and sleeves, asked a question that was
even then puzzling the young girl:
“How are you going to finish the neck? Is it to be faced, or bound,
or what?”
“I guess it will have to be ‘What,’” Florence said, trying to laugh.
“I don’t know how to fix it, I am sure. I suppose I shall use the old
collar again in some fashion; it is too small, and not the right
shape anyway, but it will have to do.”
Her aunt reached for the collar in question and examined it
critically.
“It could be set on with a bit of lace,” she said, presently. “Wide
lace, you know, falling below it, and a narrower bit above, of the
same pattern; you have seen them made in that way, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I have; that is the very latest style; but you see
the trouble is I haven’t the lace. Mother used to have a piece
of nice lace that she lent to us girls on occasions, but it was
in that dreadful trunk that was lost in the railroad accident.
It seems sometimes as though nearly everything we had that was worth
much was in that burned-up trunk.”
“I wonder if I haven’t a bit that would do for this dress,” the elder
lady said, thoughtfully. “I believe I have, if there is enough for
the sleeves, too. Suppose you climb up to that highest shelf in my
closet and get the little green box at the left corner, and we’ll
measure and see.”
Florence made a vigorous protest and, failing, went with a reluctance
that covered dismay. What had she done now! She heard herself trying
to argue with Aunt Elsie over a strip of cheap lace to prove, without
hurting her feelings, that it was not suitable for the dress
in question. What if she should fail and be obliged to accept it?
“I won’t do it!” she told herself, firmly, as she climbed after the
green box. “She has helped me a lot, and I’m thankful, but I simply
can’t reward her by tricking myself out in her old cotton finery;
not if she were father’s mother, instead of his half-sister. Oh,
dear! If Ray were only at home, she would help me out of this scrape.
I don’t care! We can’t sacrifice everything in order to save her
feelings. I’m just going to tell her that I can’t use it.”
But in less than half an hour from that resolute moment this same
maiden was standing before the sideboard mirror, aglow and eyes very
bright, “tricked out” in Aunt Elsie’s “finery,” and what she was
telling her was this:
“Oh, Aunt Elsie! I never saw anything so lovely in all my life! It is
as fine as a cobweb, and so wide! Dear me! I should like to have
Frances Powell see this; she thinks she has the most wonderful piece
of old lace in the world; it was her grandmother’s and it is
beautiful, but nothing like this! May I just show it to her some
time? Of course, I do not mean on the dress; I couldn’t think
of wearing it. Oh, I wouldn’t for the world! It is much too fine
for me.”
Said Aunt Elsie, stepping back to view it with a critic’s eye: “It
would look better, I believe, dropped a little lower on the shoulder;
just let me try it. There, isn’t that more graceful? Stand still,
dear, until I pin it all around, then I can sew it on in a minute.
Nonsense, child, of course you will wear it; that is what it is for;
I’m glad there is enough for the sleeves; I was a little bit afraid—
but there is plenty.”
The lace went to the party that same evening, accompanied by a
radiant girl, who, as she surveyed herself in the mirror confided
to Jean that, thanks to Aunt Elsie, she felt herself to be really
well dressed for the first time in her life.
“The idea!” Jean said, “when you have worn that same dress dozens
of times.”
“Yes, but you see it has been glorified; it never looked like this
before.”
Jean regarded her gravely, with a faraway look in her eyes; evidently
her thoughts were elsewhere. Unconsciously to herself she began
to sing softly:
“I shall rise again at morning’s dawn,
I shall put on glory then.”
“What on earth!” began Florence, wheeling about to stare at her. Jean
laughed shamefacedly.
“Evidently you don’t think my selection fits the occasion,” she said.
“It was your ‘glorified’ dress that did it. That is a song we are to
sing next week at vespers; it is a very catchy tune; I find myself
humming it half the time.” Whereupon she sang again:
“I’m travelling toward life’s sunset gate,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”
“To be sure, you are a pilgrim going away from home,” she broke off
to say, “but you have ‘put on glory’ all the same. You look too
lovely for anything, as Florry Mitchell is always saying. Aunt Elsie
ought to give you that lace; it just fits you. How queer for her to
have such a costly cobweb as that! I wonder how it feels to be near
that other home?” She was humming again:
“For the glow of eventide I wait,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”
“How dreadfully you mix things!” Florence shivered a little as she
spoke.
“Well,” said Jean, with a graver face than one often saw her wear,
“things are dreadfully mixed in this life. You know that Helen
Darroll who stayed to dinner here the night it rained so hard? She
has been planning for more than a week for that dancing party
to-night at Dr. Willard’s; couldn’t think or talk of anything else;
and just before school closed to-day she had a telegram that her
father had been thrown from his horse and killed.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” said Florence.
“Isn’t it? So sudden! She is travelling home to-night, instead of
dancing. I wonder if her father has ‘put on glory’? I hope he was
a good man.”
Florence gave her sister another quick, searching look, and after
a moment said: “You are a very strange girl, Jean, do you know it?”
“Why?” Jean asked. “What is there strange about hoping that a man
who had to exchange worlds without a moment’s warning was ready
for it? Florence, the way that lace falls back from your arms
is exquisite; I shouldn’t wonder if you would be the most becomingly
dressed girl there. Isn’t it time you were off? The moon has risen.
Oh, look! isn’t it a glorious night!”
She drew back the curtain to gaze on the shimmering glory, and
Florence went downstairs to the sound of her voice trilling:
“For the glow of eventide I wait,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”
An hour later Derrick came clattering downstairs and bounced into the
family sitting-room with an imperious question: “Where is Ray?”
When his mother explained that Kendall had taken her out for a
moonlight walk, he growled: “Oh, bother Kendall! He is always
carrying her off just when a fellow needs her most. I can’t make any
sense of this mess and I’ve gone over it fifty times, at least.
I wish there wasn’t such a language as Latin, anyhow, or else I wish
that a fellow like me had—”
At that point he stopped, and his mother took up the unfinished
sentence: “Had a mother who knew enough to help him out of trouble,
was that what you were about to say?”
“Not much it wasn’t!” with a quick little flash from expressive eyes.
“I’ve got exactly the kind of mother I like best; but I wish I had
brains enough to see through a thing, without everlasting drudgery;
I spend more time on my Latin than all the fellows do put together,
and then don’t more than half know. Ray, now, could tell in two
minutes what all this fool stuff is about. Why can’t I see it?”
Then from a voice just behind him came a surprising suggestion: “What
if you should let me have a peep at it, young man? I used to be
called a fairly good Latin scholar once; I may not have forgotten
all of it.”
Derrick turned suddenly. Up to that moment he had not noticed that
his Aunt Elsie was in the room; and he thought he would not have been
more astonished if the bronze figure supporting the droplight
had offered to help him.
“Do you know Latin?” he asked, with an emphasis on the pronoun that
marked his amazement. His aunt laughed good-naturedly.
“Try me,” she said, as she reached for the book in his hand. “I used
to be somewhat familiar with this book, which is open to the very
page over which I once puzzled, for—I believe I won’t confess
how long; but I’ll venture to guess that this second paragraph is the
one that you sit up nights with.”
“You’ve guessed right the first time,” he said, gleefully. “If you
can help a fellow out of a snarl like that, I shall conclude you are
a witch. None of the boys can make sense of it.”
As he spoke he kicked a hassock toward her and seated himself on it;
Aunt Elsie, book in hand, bent toward him, and for the next half hour
the two were absorbed. At the end of that time, Derrick gave a
triumphant whistle.
“There you are!” he stopped to say, pounding his translation for
emphasis. “Straight as preaching; never believed it could be done.
I say, Aunt Elsie, you’re a trump! Who would have thought that
old—I mean that a woman of your age would—would be interested
in Latin!”
Aunt Elsie laughed. “I used to be wonderfully interested in it,”
she said. “Very few of the girls in our neighborhood studied Latin;
it wasn’t as common then as it is now, but I wanted to do everything
that my brother did. The brother you are named for was the best Latin
scholar in our school.”
At this Derrick frowned slightly, and cast a quick look at his aunt
as he said: “I was named for my grandfather.”
“I know—and for your Uncle Derrick as well; your father’s brother;
you know of him, of course?”
By this time they were alone; Jean, after yawning over her books
for a while, had declared herself too sleepy to study, and said
good-night. A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Forman had slipped away
to see if her husband’s head was better, leaving the two absorbed
ones to their Latin. Derrick glanced around to make sure that no one
else was within hearing before admitting that he had heard of such a
person, but had never felt any great desire to claim him as an uncle.
“Then you do him very great injustice,” his aunt said, quickly. “He
was worthy of your respect, as well as your love; you didn’t know
him, of course, but I did; I knew him as a child, and he was the
dearest big brother a little girl ever had; if you knew all that I do
about him you would be proud to claim Derrick Forman as an uncle.”
Derrick, the nephew, made flourishing capital D’s all over the
blank half page in his exercise book and considered.