“Just in time!” cried Jeannie Hadden, running up into Leslie’s room at mid-afternoon that day.  “There’s a stage over from Littleton, and your trunk is being brought up this minute.”

“And the hair-trunk and the mail-bag came on, too, after all, and the queerest people with them!” added Elinor, entering behind her.

They both stood back and were silent, as a man came heavily along the passage with the trunk upon his shoulder.  He set it down and unfastened the straps, and in a minute more was gone, and Leslie had the lid open.  All there, just as it had been in her own room at home three days ago.  Her face brightened, seeing her little treasures again.  She had borne it well; she had been able to enjoy without them; but she was very glad that they were come.

“It’s nice that dinner is at lunch-time here, and that nobody dresses until now.  Make haste, and get on something pretty.  Augusta won’t let us get out organdies, but we’re determined on the blue grenadines.  It’s awfully hot,—­hot enough for anything.  Do your hair over the high rats, just for once.”

“I always get into such a fuss with them, and I can’t bear to waste the time.  How will this do?” Leslie unpinned from its cambric cover a gray iron barege, with a narrow puffing round the hem of the full skirt and the little pointed bertha cape.  With it lay bright cherry ribbons for the neck and hair.

“Lovely!  Make haste and come down to our room.”  And having to dress herself, Jeannie ran off again, and Elinor shut the door.

It was nice to have on everything fresh; to have got her feet into rosetted slippers instead of heavy balmoral boots; to feel the lightness and grace of her own movement as she went downstairs and along the halls in floating folds of delicate barege, after wearing the close, uncomfortable traveling-dress, with the sense of dust and fatigue that clung about it; to have a little flutter of bright ribbon in her hair, that she knew was, as Elinor said, “the prettiest part of her.”  It was pleasant to see Mrs. Linceford looked pleased, as she opened her door to her, and to have her say, “You always do get on exactly the right thing!” There was a fresh feeling of pleasure even in looking over at Washington, sun-lighted and shadowed in his miles of heights and depths, as she sat by the cool east window, feeling quite her dainty self again.  Dress is but the outside thing, as beauty is but “skin deep;” but there is a deal of inevitable skin-sensation, pleasurable or uncomfortable, and Leslie had a good right to be thoroughly comfortable now.

The blinds to the balcony window were closed; that led to a funny little episode presently,—­an odd commentary on the soul-and-body question, as it had come up to them in graver fashion.

Outside, to two chairs just under the window, came a couple newly arrived,—­the identical proprietors of the exchanged luggage.  It was an elderly countryman, and his home-bred, matter-of-fact wife.  They, too, had had their privations and anxieties, and the outset of their evidently unusual travels had been marred in its pleasure.  In plain truth, the good woman was manifestly soured by her experience.