Elmira whirled slowly, in a whispering, shimmering circle of pale green silk; a little wrought-lace cape, which also had been part of her mother’s bridal array, covered her bare neck, for the dress was cut low.  She had bought a new ribbon of green and white, like the striped grass of the gardens, for her bonnet, and tied it in a crisp and dainty bow under her chin.  This same bonnet, of a fine Florence braid, had served her for best for nearly ten years.  She had worn a bright ribbon on it in the winter season and a delicate-hued one in summer-time, but it was always the same bonnet.

Elmira had not had a new summer ribbon for three years, and now, in addition, she had purchased some rosebuds, and arranged them in little clusters in a frilling of lace inside the brim.  Her pretty face looked out of this little millinery halo with an indescribably mild and innocent radiance.  One caught one’s self looking past her fixed shining eyes for the brightness which they saw and reflected.

“Well,” said her mother, “I guess you look as well as some other folks, if you didn’t lay out quite so much money.  I guess folks will have to give in you do.”

Ann Edwards’s little nervous face wore rather an expression of antagonistic triumph than a smile of motherly approval; so hostile had been all her conditions of life that she never laid down her weapons, and went with spear in rest, as it were, even into her few by-paths of delight.

She pulled Elmira’s skirts here and there to be sure they hung evenly; she bade her stand close, and picked out the ribbon bow under her chin.  “Now you’d better run along,” said she, “or the bell will stop tollin’.”

She watched the girl, in her own old bridal array, step down the front path, with more happiness than she had known since her husband’s disappearance.  Elmira had told her mother that Lawrence Prescott was coming to see her, and she had immediately leaped to furthest conclusions.  Ann Edwards had not a doubt that Lawrence and Elmira would be married.  She had, when it was once awakened, that highest order of ambition which ignores even the existence of obstacles.

As Elmira’s green skirts fluttered out of sight behind some lilac-bushes pluming to the wind with purple blossoms Jerome came in, and his mother turned to him.  “I guess Elmira will do about as well as any of the girls,” said she, with her tone of blissful yet half-vindictive triumph.

Jerome looked at her wonderingly.  “Why shouldn’t she?” said he.

Immediately Mrs. Edwards put forth her feminine craft like an involuntary tentacle of protection for her excess of imagination, against the masculine practicality of her son.  Neither she nor Elmira had said anything about Lawrence Prescott to him; both knew how he would regard the matter.  It seemed to Mrs. Edwards that she had fairly heard him say:  “Marry Doctor Prescott’s son!  You know better, mother.”  Now she, with her Bible on her knees, shunted rapidly the whole truth behind a half-truth.