An hour later Charlotte, having dispatched considerable business, bundling it out of the way as if it had suddenly become of no account, was delving in a trunk for a frock.

“It’s the one and only possible thing I have that will do for one of Len’s ‘little dinners,’” she was saying to herself.  “I know just how she’ll be looking, and I must live up to her.  I wonder if I can mend it to be fit—­I wonder.”

She carried it downstairs.  Madam Chase, sitting by the window with her knitting, looked up.

“Mending lace, dearie?” she asked.  “Can’t I do it for you?”

“I’m afraid it’s beyond even you, Granny,” she said, ruefully.  To the deaf ears her gesture told more than her words.

“Let me see,” commanded the old lady.  When the gauzy gown was spread before her she examined it carefully.

“If it need not be washed—­” she began.

“It must be.  Look at the bottom.”  Charlotte’s expressive hands demonstrated as she talked.  “I’ve danced in it and sat out dances in all sorts of places in it.  But I can wash it, if you can mend it.  I’ll wash it with the tips of my fingers.”

“I will try,” said her grandmother.

That afternoon Charlotte carefully laundered the mended gown, dried it in the sun and ironed it, partly with her fingers, partly with a tiny iron.  Finished, it was a work of art, a frock of rare lace of exquisite design, several times made over, and now, in its last stage, prettier than in its first.

“If it will hold together,” Charlotte said laughing, as she put it on, and, kneeling before Granny, waited while the delicate old fingers slowly fastened each eyelet.  When she rose she was a figure at which the old lady who loved her looked with pleased eyes.

“You are beautiful, dearie,” she said.  “And nobody will guess that your dress is mended.”

“Not a bit, thanks to your clever fingers.  Now I’ll go find some flowers to wear, and then I’m off.  I’ll come back to put you to bed, and you’ll send Bob over if you want the least thing, won’t you, even the least?”

Charlotte went out into her garden, holding her skirts carefully away from possible touch of bush or briar.  Late August flowers were many, but among them were none that pleased her.  She came away therefore without a touch of colour upon her white attire, yet seeming to need none, the bloom upon her cheek was so clear, the dusk of her hair so rich.

“Isn’t she fascinating?” said Winifred Chester in the ear of John Leaver, as Charlotte came in.  “I never saw a girl who seemed so radiantly well and happy, with so little to make her so.  I think she and Madam Chase must be very poor, all the nice things they have seem so old, and the new things so very simple.  Ellen says the family was a very fine one.”

“Very fine,” he agreed.  His eyes were upon Charlotte as she greeted her hosts.  He answered Winifred’s further comments absently.  He bowed gravely in response to Charlotte’s recognition of him, then turned and talked with the pretty girl whom Ellen had asked him to take in to dinner.