I spent three days at the great Klein store, only going to the hotel to sleep and most of the time I forgot to eat.  Madam Rene must have been Madam Courtier’s twin sister in youth, and Madam Telliers in the hat department was the triplet to them both.  When women have genius it breaks out all over them like measles and they never recover from it; those women had the confluent kind.  But I know that old Rene really liked me, for when I blushed and asked her if they had a good beauty doctor in the store she held up her hands and shuddered.

“Never, Madam, never pour vous. Ravissant, charmant—­it is to fool.  Nevair! Jamais, jamais de la vie!” I had to calm her down and she kissed my hand when we parted.

I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed the check which would be good for a house and lot and motor-car for him, but he didn’t.  Only he got even with me by saying:  “And I am delighted that the trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, Mrs. Carter.”

That was an awful shock and I hope I didn’t show it as I murmured:  “Perfectly, thank you.”

The word “trousseau” can be spoken in a woman’s presence for many years with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first really hears it.  I felt funny all afternoon as I packed those trunks for the five o’clock train.

Yes, the word “trousseau” ought to have a definite surname after it always and that’s why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the light of my conscience.  The thinking of him had a strange effect on me.  I had laid out the dream in dark gray-blue rajah, tailored almost beyond endurance, to wear home on the train and had thrown the old black taffeta bag across the chair to give to the hotel maid, but the decision of the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind of panic of respect.

I would lots rather have bought poor Mr. Carter the monument I have been planning for months to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline, than wear that dress again.  I felt conscience reprove me once more with loyalty looking on in disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for the last time, because I really ought to have stayed over a day to buy that monument, but—­to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so desperately that his “sleep-place” above my heart hurt as if it might have prickly heat break out at any minute.

So I hurried and stuffed the gray-blue darling in the top tray, lapped old black taffeta around my waist and belted it in with a black belt off a new green linen I had made for morning walks, down to the drug store on the public square, I suppose.  That is about the only morning dissipation in Hillsboro that I can think of, and it all depends on whom you meet, how much of a dissipation it is.

The next thing that happens after you have done a noble deed is, you either regard it as a reward of virtue or as a punishment for having been foolish.  I felt both ways when Judge Wade came down the car aisle, looking so much grander than any other man in sight that I don’t see how they stand him ever.  At that minute the noble black-taffeta deed felt foolish, but at the next minute I thanked my lucky stars for it.