It was a private matinee, watching Miss Susanna and Miss Araminta buy the things that Mr. Peter Smith had ordered and which they couldn’t understand his having in stock.  The trimmings and linings and gloves and stockings were exactly what was needed and they couldn’t get over how fortunate it was.  They paid for them themselves, as I had handed their money to them when we started out, holding back only enough to pay Miss Fannie Cross; but though they took some time to do the buying, and felt and smoothed everything they bought and put the satin to their cheeks to be sure of its quality, and looked at each other every now and then as if what they were doing was wicked, perhaps, but fearfully enjoyable, still in two days everything was at Miss Fannie’s, and it was then I had to be awfully firm with Miss Araminta.

There are some things some women can never take in, and one is that an old sheep should never dress lamb fashion.  It was all Miss Fannie (she’s a corking-good dressmaker for a small place) and I could do to hold Miss Araminta down when it came to colors, and the cut of her skirt, and some trimmings she wanted to put on the waist.  She thinks she loves lavender, but Joseph’s coat would have been a colorless piece of apparel beside her dress if we finally hadn’t sat on her and told her certain things couldn’t be done.  She was crazy to pile on a bunch of ancestral lace, yellow and dowdy; but we told her not much, told her freshness and daintiness suited her style much better, and she wasn’t old enough to emphasize ancestral lace, and she blushed and gave in.  But nothing would have made her do it if Miss Fannie hadn’t thought to throw out the age-line.  She caught on and agreed, and after that we did not have a great deal of trouble.

Miss Susanna was a little crankier than I thought she was going to be, and wanted a practical dress that she could wear anywhere at any time, and we had to argue with her a good deal.  I told her a train was the thing for her, and I intended to walk behind her the night of the party and keep everybody back far enough to see how grand she looked.  When a woman is sixty-six and pretty worn, short skirts for evenings are not impressive, and, though we didn’t mention age, we said finally she owed it to her mother’s memory to dress in a style suitable to the position into which she had been born, and that settled it.  She’s the real thing, Miss Susanna is.  She doesn’t have to play a part.

I had told Miss Fannie on the quiet that the price of making the dresses would be doubled if she would have them ready for the 17th of August, and they were ready.  Miss Araminta and Miss Susanna thought it was a bad example to set, as it might not be just to the other Twickenham-Towners to pay more than they could pay, and it stuck Miss Araminta pretty deep to hand out more than was necessary.  But I told her it was an emergency operation and that kind always came high.  And also I told them that Miss Fannie