“I will have that one,” said Josephine, after she had eyed it a moment, with her head on one side, like a canary-bird.  “How much is it?”

“Two fifty a yard, Miss,” said the spruce clerk, with an inaccessible air.

“I shall look so nice in it!” Josey murmured.  “Sue, will seventeen yards do? it must be very full and long; I can’t wear flounces.”

“Yes, that’s plenty,” said I, scarce able to keep down a smile at Laura’s face.

She would as soon have smoked a cigar on the steps of the hotel as have mentioned before anybody, much less a supercilious clerk, that she should “look so nice” in anything.  Josey never thought of anything beyond the fact, which was only a fact.  So, after getting another dress of a lavender tint, still self-colored, but corded and rich, because it went well with her complexion, and a black one, that “father liked to see against her yellow wig, as he called it,” Mrs. Josephine proceeded to a milliner’s, where, to Laura’s further astonishment, she bought bonnets for herself, as if she had been her own doll, with an utter disregard of proper self-depreciation, trying one after another, and discarding them for various personal reasons, till at last she fixed on a little gray straw, trimmed with gray ribbon and white daisies, “for camp,” she said, and another of white lace, a fabric calculated to wear twice, perhaps, if its floating sprays of clematis did not catch in any parasol on its first appearance.  She called me to see how becoming both the bonnets were, viewed herself in various ways in the glass, and at last announced that she looked prettiest in the straw, but the lace was most elegant.  To this succeeded purchases of lace and shawls, that still farther opened Laura’s eyes, and made her face grave.  She confided to me privately, that, after all, I must allow Josephine was silly and extravagant.  I had just come from that little lady’s room, where she sat surrounded by the opened parcels, saying, with the gravity of a child,—­

“I do like pretty things, Sue!  I like them more now than I used to, because Frank likes me.  I am so glad I’m pretty!”

I don’t know how it was, but I could not quite coincide with Laura’s strictures.  Josey was extravagant, to be sure; she was vain; but something so tender and feminine flavored her very faults that they charmed me.  I was not an impartial judge; and I remembered, through all, that April night, and the calm, resolute, self-poised character that invested the lovely, girlish face with such dignity, strength, and simplicity.  No, she was not silly; I could not grant that to Laura.

Every day we drove to the camp, and brought Frank home to dinner.  Now and then he stayed with us till the next day, and even Laura could not wonder at his “infatuation,” as she had once called it, when she saw how thoroughly Josephine forgot herself in her utter devotion to him; over this, Laura’s eyes filled with sad forebodings.