"A hat?" Dolly inquired, eagerly.
"Something you need worse than a hat," the mother smiled. "It is a dress—an organdie, a regular beauty. She made it for Mary Cobb, and you know Mary always orders the best, but, the poor girl's mother bein' dead, the dress come back on Miss Stella's hands. She could force Mary to stick to her agreement, but she hates to do it when the girl has to put on black and is in so much trouble. Even as it is, you wouldn't have had the chance at it, but you and Mary are exactly of a size, an' there'll be no alterations to make."
"Oh, I want to see it!" Dolly sprang lightly up the steps and hurried into her mother's room on the right of the hall, where a tall, angular, middle-aged spinster sat with her stained and needle-pricked fingers linked in her lap.
"How are you, Miss Stella?" she cried, kissing the thin cheek cordially. "I've already heard about that dress. Winnie Mayfield helped Mary pick out the cloth and trimmings, and she said you would make it the sweetest thing in the valley. Pink is my color. Where is—oh!" She had descried it as it lay on the bed, and with hands clasped in delight, she sprang toward it. "Oh, it is a dream—a dream, Miss Stella! You are an artist."
She picked the flimsy garment up and held it at arm's length. Then she hung it on one of the tall bed-posts and stood back to admire it, uttering little ejaculations of delight. "I know it will fit. I wore one of Mary's dresses to a party one night, and it was exactly right in every way. Oh, oh, what a beauty! You are a wonder. You could get rich in a city."
"I think Miss Stella is trying to advertise her work," Mrs. Drake jested. "She knows Mr. Mostyn will see it, and he'd have to talk about it. Town men are close observers of what girls put on—more so, by a long shot, than country men. I wouldn't be surprised if some rich person wrote to you to come down to Atlanta, Miss Stella."
Dolly was dancing about the room like a happy child, now placing herself in one position, then another, in order to view the dress from every possible point of vantage. She even went out into the hall and sauntered back as if to surprise herself by a sudden sight of the treasure.
"Stop your silliness!" her mother laughingly chided her. "You are a regular circus clown or monkey in a cage when you try yourself."
"I just want you to put it on, Dolly," the seamstress said, with elation. "All the time I was at work on it I kept thinking how nice it would look on you. Mary is plain; I reckon there is no harm in saying that, even if her mother is dead."
"She will look better in black," said Mrs. Drake, "or pure white. Colors as full of life as this dress has would die dead on a dingy complexion like Mary's, or any of the Cobb women, for that matter. They look for the world as if they lived on coffee and couldn't git it out of their systems. Dolly, shuck off your dress and try it on."
Dolly needed no urging. In her excitement she forgot to correct her mother's speech, which she would have done on any other occasion, and began at once to divest her slender form of her waist and skirt, dropping the latter at her feet and springing lightly out of the circular heap. The seamstress took up the dress carefully and held it in readiness.
"You will be a regular butterfly in it," she said, laughingly. "You are light on your feet as a grasshopper anyway."
While the two women were buttoning and hooking the garment on her Dolly kept up a running fire of amusing comments, arching her beautiful bare neck as she eyed herself in the mirror on the bureau.
"It will come in handy for meeting on the First Sunday," Mrs. Drake remarked. "Folks will have on their best if the weather is fine, an' I don't see no sign o' rain. It will make Ann awful jealous; she is just at the age to think she is as big as anybody, an' don't seem to remember that Dolly makes 'er own money. But Dolly's to blame for that; she spoils Ann constantly by letting her wear things she ought to keep for herself."
"Growing girls are all that way about things to put on," mumbled Miss Munson, the corner of her mouth full of pins. "I know I had all sorts o' high an' mighty ideas. I fell in love with a widower old enough to be my grandfather. And I was—stand a little to the right, please. There, that is all right. Quit wiggling. I was such a fool about him, and showed it so plain that it turned the old scamp's head. He actually called to see me one night. Oh, it was exciting! Father took down his shotgun from the rack over the fireplace and ordered him off the place. Then he spanked me—father spanked me good and sound and made me go to bed. You may say what you please, but that sort o' medicine will certainly cure a certain brand o' love. It did more to convince me that I was not grown than anything else had ever done. From that day on I hated the sight of that man. All at once he looked to me as old as Santa Claus. I had a sort of smarting feeling every time I thought of him, and he did look ridiculous that night as he broke an' run across the yard with two of our dogs after him."
"Oh, isn't it lovely?" Dolly was now before the looking-glass, bending right and left, stepping back and then forward, fluffing out her rich hair, her cheeks flushed, her eyes gleaming with delight.
"I wish you could just stand off and take a good look at yourself, Dolly," Mrs. Drake cried, enthusiastically. "I simply don't know what to compare you to. Where you got your good looks I can't imagine. But mother used to say that her mother in Virginia come of a long line of noted beauties. Our folks away back, Miss Stella, as maybe you know, had fine blood in 'em."
"It certainly crops out in Dolly," Miss Munson declared. "I've heard folks say they took their little ones to school just to get a chance to set and look at her while she was teaching. I know that I, myself, have always—"
"Oh, you both make me sick—you make me talk slang, too," Dolly said, impatiently. "I'm not good-looking—that is, nothing to brag about—but, Miss Stella, this dress would make a scarecrow look like an angel, and it does fit. Poor Mary! I hope she won't see it on me. It is hard enough to lose a mother without—"
"Go out on the grass and walk about," Mrs. Drake urged her. "An' let us look at you from the window. I want to see how you look at a distance."
"Do you think I'm crazy?" Dolly demanded, but as merrily as a child playing a game, she lifted the skirt from the floor and lightly tripped away. The watchers saw her go down the porch steps with the majestic grace of a young queen and move along the graveled walk toward the gate. At this point an unexpected thing happened. John Webb and Mostyn had been fishing and were returning in a buggy. The banker got out and came in at the gate just as Dolly, seeing him, was turning to retreat into the house.
"Hold on, do, please!" Mostyn cried out.
Dolly hesitated for a moment, and then, drawing herself erect, she stood and waited for him quite as if there was nothing unusual in what was taking place.
"What have you been doing to yourself?" he cried, his glance bearing down admiringly on her.
"Oh, just trying on a frock," she answered, her face charmingly pink in its warmth, her long lashes betraying a tendency to droop, and her rich round voice quivering. "Those two women in there made me come out here so they could see me. I ought to have had more sense."
"I'm certainly glad they did, since it has given me a chance to see you this way. Why, Dolly, do you know that dress is simply marvelous. I have always thought you were—" Mostyn half hesitated—"beautiful, but this dress makes you—well, it makes you—indescribable."
Avoiding his burning eyes, Dolly frankly explained the situation. "You see it is a sort of windfall," she added. "I've got enough saved up to pay for it as it is, but if it were not a bargain I could never dream of it. Mary's father is well off, and she is the special pet of a rich uncle."
Glancing down the road, she saw the bowed figure of a man approaching, and at once her face became grave. "It is Tobe Barnett," she said. "I want to ask him about Robby."
Leaving Mostyn, she hastened to the fence, meeting the uplifted and woeful glance of Barnett as he neared her. "Why, Tobe, what is the matter? You look troubled. Robby isn't worse, is he?"
"I declare, I hardly know, Miss Dolly," the gaunt