"This wrapper is well enough," she said, more to herself, than Eunice,
who was still standing by the door looking at her.
Eunice did not think the wrapper well enough. It was pretty, she knew,
but not as pretty as the dresses she had seen hanging in Ethelyn's
closet when she arranged the room that morning; so she said,
hesitatingly: "I wish you wouldn't wear that down. You were so handsome
yesterday in the black gown, with them red earrings and pin, and your
hair brushed up, so."
Ethelyn liked to look well, even here in Olney, and so the wrapper was
laid aside, the beautiful brown hair was wound in heavy coils about the
back of the head, and brushed back from her white forehead after a
fashion which made her look still younger and more girlish than she was.
A pretty plaid silk, with trimmings of blue, was chosen for to-day,
Eunice going nearly wild over the short jaunty basque, laced at the
sides and the back. Eunice had offered to stay and assist at her young
mistress' toilet, and as Ethelyn was not unaccustomed to the office of
waiting-maid, she accepted Eunice's offer, finding, to her surprise,
that the coarse red fingers, which that day had washed and starched her
linen, were not unhandy even among the paraphernalia of a Boston
lady's toilet.
"You do look beautiful," Eunice said, standing back to admire Ethelyn,
when at last she was dressed. "I have thought Melinda Jones handsome,
but she can't hold a candle to you, nor nobody else I ever seen, except
Miss Judge Miller, in Camden. She do act some like you, with her gown
dragglin' behind her half a yard."
Thus flattered and complimented, Ethelyn shook out her skirts, which
"draggled half a yard behind," and went downstairs to where Mrs. Jones
sat working on Timothy's shirt, and Melinda was crocheting, while Mrs.
Markham, senior, clean and neat, and stiff in her starched, purple
calico, sat putting a patch on a fearfully large hole in the knee of
Andy's pants. As Ethelyn swept into the room there fell a hush upon the
inmates, and Mrs. Jones was almost guilty of an exclamation of surprise.
She had expected something fine, she said--something different from the
Olney quality--but she was not prepared for anything as grand and
queenly as Ethelyn, when she sailed into the room, with her embroidered
handkerchief held so gracefully in her hands, and in response to Mrs.
Markham's introduction, bowed so very low, and slowly, too, her lips
scarcely moving at all, and her eyes bent on the ground. Mrs. Jones
actually ran the needle she was sewing with under her thumb in her
sudden start, while Melinda's crocheting dropped into her lap. She, too,
was surprised, though not as much as her mother. She, like Eunice, had
seen Mrs. Judge Miller, from New York, whose bridal trousseau was
imported from Paris, and whose wardrobe was the wonder of Camden. And
Ethelyn was very much like her, only younger and prettier.