I think I will put on my pink linen, and my hat lined with pink chiffon and trimmed with shaded roses.  That particular shade of pink is just right for my hair.  I know quite well how I look in that gown and hat, and I know, also, quite well how I shall look to the members of my family assembled below.  They all unanimously consider that I should dress always in black silk, and a bonnet with a neat little tuft of middle-aged violets, and black ribbons tied under my chin.  I know I am wicked to put on that pink gown and hat, but I shall do it.  I wonder why it amuses me to be made fun of.  Thank fortune, I have a sense of humor.  If I did not have that it might have come to the black silk and the bonnet with the tuft of violets, for the Lord knows I have not, after all, so very much compared with what some women have.  It troubles me to think of that young fool rushing away and poor, dear little Peggy; but what can I do?  This pink gown is fetching, and how they will stare when I go down!

Well, they did stare.  How pretty this street is, with the elms arching over it.  I made quite a commotion, and they all saw me through their eyeglasses of prejudice, except, possibly, Tom Price, Maria’s husband.  I am certain I heard him say, as I marched away, “Well, I don’t care; she does look stunning, anyhow,” but Maria hushed him up.  I heard her say, “Pink at her age, and a pink hat, and a parasol lined with pink!” Ada really looked more disturbed than I have ever seen her.  If I had been Godiva, going for my sacrificial ride through the town, it could not have been much worse.  She made her eyes round and big, and asked, in a voice which was really agitated, “Are you going out in that dress.  Aunt Elizabeth?” And Aunt Elizabeth replied that she certainly was, and she went after she had exchanged greetings with the family and kissed Peggy’s tear-stained little face.  Charles Edward’s wife actually straightened her spinal column, she was so amazed at the sight of me in my rose-colored array.  Charles Edward, to do him justice, stared at me with a bewildered air, as if he were trying to reconcile his senses with his traditions.  He is an artist, but he will always be hampered by thinking he sees what he has been brought up to think he sees.  That is the reason why he has settled down uncomplainingly in Cyrus’s “Works,” as he calls them, doing the very slight aesthetics possible in such a connection.  Now Charles Edward would think that sunburned grass over in that field is green, when it is pink, because he has been taught that grass is green.  If poor Charles Edward only knew that grass was green not of itself, but because of occasional conditions, and knew that his aunt looked—­well, as she does look—­he would flee for his life, and that which is better than his life, from the “Works,” and be an artist, but he never will know or know that he knows, which comes to the same thing.