“To waste in ribbons and bonnets?” asked business-woman Susan.

“Why, Susie, how you do talk!  A body would think you had never worn a ribbon, and that you’d gone bareheaded all the days of your life.  But you needn’t talk:  it’s not so long ago but I can remember when you were as fond of dress as any girl in the city.  I remember how you used to tease mamma for pretty things.”

“Which I never got, even though I was earning them over and over.”  Susan spoke half sadly, half bitterly.

“Well, you ought to have had nice things, Susie, when you were in society,” Gertrude insisted.  “Girls can’t get married if they’re shabby and old-fashioned.”

“That’s true,” said Susan gravely.

“I think,” continued her sister, “it’s the meanest feeling, the sheep-ish-est”—­Gertrude syllabled the word to make sure of her hold on it—­“in this world to know that the gentlemen are ashamed to show you attention.  Now, I’m cleverer and better-looking than lots of girls in our set—­Delia Spaulding, for instance—­but I don’t have half the attention she receives, just on account of her fixings and furbelows.”

“And Miss Spaulding always manages to keep ahead in those sublimities,” said Brother Tom.

“Yes,” assented Gertrude briskly.  “No matter what on earth the rest of us girls get, Delia Spaulding manages to have something to cast us into the shade.  It makes me so mad!  Now, last week at Mrs. Gildersleeve’s, when I dressed for the party I thought I looked really nice.  I felt a complacency toward myself, as Margaret Pillsbury would say.  But when I got to the party, there was Delia Spaulding prinked out with such lights and shades and lustres that I looked plain as a Quaker in comparison with her—­or with any of the other girls, for that matter.  Do you know, Susie, what the feeling is to be always behind in dress?”

“Yes,” Susan answered, a piteous shadow coming into her face as memories of the heart-burning days were evoked, “but I am glad to have done with all the vanity and heartache that comes of it.”

“But yet, Susie, you ought to know how to feel for me.”

“I do know how,” Susan answered.

“Then why don’t you help me across some of the heartache?”

“I might help you into a worse heartache by my meddling,” Susan suggested.

“You don’t want anybody to marry you because you dress well and are stylish?” said Brother Tom, undertaking to explain Susan’s meaning.

“I don’t know that I want anybody to marry me for any reason,” Gertrude flashed out, her cheeks flushing, “but I like to go, once in a while, to young people’s gatherings, and then I like to be dressed so that gentlemen are not ashamed to be seen with me.”

“A fellow ought to have pluck enough to stand up for the merit of a young lady, no matter how she’s dressed.”