Cloudy Jewel & Aunt Crete's Emancipation. Grace Livingston Hill

      The gray voile was entirely satisfactory to the two shoppers. Donald recognized it as the thing many women of his acquaintance wore at the receptions he had attended in university circles. Aunt Crete fingered it wistfully, and had her inward doubts whether anything so frail and lovely, like a delicate veil, would wear; but, looking at Donald’s happy face, she decided not to mention it. The dress was more beautiful than anything she had ever dreamed of possessing. “But it won’t fit me,” she sighed as she and Miss Brower were on the way to the “trying-on” room, where the garment was to be fitted to her. “I’m so dumpy, you know, and Luella always says it’s no use to get me anything ready-made.”

      “O, the fitter will make it fit,” said Miss Brower convincingly; and then, with a glance at the ample waist, whose old-fashioned lines lay meekly awry as if they were used to being put on that way and were beyond even discouragement: “Why don’t you wear one of those stiffened waists? There’s a new one on sale, has soft bones all around, and is real comfortable. It would make your dresses set a great deal better. If you like, I’ll go get one, and you can be fitted over it. You don’t like anything very tight, do you?”

      “No,” said Aunt Crete in a deprecatory tone, “I never could bear anything real tight. That’s what puts Luella out so about me. But, if you say there’s a waist that’s comfortable, I should be so obliged if you’d get it. I’d be willing to pay any price not to look so dumpy.”

      She felt that if it took the last cent she possessed, and made all her relatives angry with her, she must have something to fit her once.

      Miss Brower, thus commissioned, went away, and returned very soon with the magical waist that was to transform Miss Lucretia’s “figger.” If Donald could have seen his aunt’s face when she was finally arrayed in the soft folds of the gray voile and was being pinned up and pinned down and pinned in and pinned out, he would have been fully repaid. Aunt Crete’s ecstasy was marred only by the fact that Luella could not see her grandeur. Actually being fitted in a department-store to a “real imported” dress! Could mortal attain higher in this mundane sphere?

      When the fitting was pronounced done and Aunt Crete was about to don her discouraged shirt-waist once more, Miss Brower appeared in the doorway with a coat and skirt suit over her arm, made of fine soft black taffeta.

      “Just put this on and let the gentleman see how he likes it,” she said. She had been out to talk over matters with Donald and have an understanding as to what was wanted. She had advised the taffeta coat and skirt for travelling, with an extra cloth coat for cool days. Aunt Crete, with the new dignity that consciousness of her improved figure gave her, rustled out to her nephew looking like a new woman, her face beaming.

      That was a wonderful day. Aunt Crete retired again for the black taffeta to be altered a little, and yet again for a black and white dotted swiss, and a white linen suit, and a handsome black crêpe de chine, and then to have the measure taken for the silver-gray silk, which the head dressmaker promised could be hurried through. They bought a black chiffon waist and some filmy, dreamy white shirt-waists, simple and plain in design, with exquisite lace simply applied, fine hand-made tucks, and finer material. Miss Brower advised white linen and white lawn for morning wear at the seashore, and gave Aunt Crete confidence, telling how she had a customer, “a woman about as old as you, with just such lovely white hair,” who but yesterday purchased a set of white dresses for morning wear at the seashore. This silenced the thoughts of her sister’s horror at “White for you, Crete! What are you thinking of?” Never mind, she was going to have one good time, even if she had to put all her lovely finery away in a trunk afterwards, and never bring it out again, or—dreary thought—were made to cut it over for Luella sometime. Well, it might come to that, but at least she would enjoy it while it was hers.

      Two white linen skirts, a handsome black cloth coat, several pairs of silk gloves, black and white, some undergarments dainty enough for a bride, a whole dozen pairs of stockings! How Aunt Crete rejoiced in those! She had been wearing stockings whose feet were cut out of old stocking legs for fifteen years. She couldn’t remember when she had had a whole new pair of stockings all her own. And then two new bonnets.

      All these things were acquired little by little. It was while they were in the millinery department, and Miss Brower had just set a charming black lace bonnet made on a foundation of white roses on the white hair, that Donald decided she was one of the most beautiful old ladies he had ever seen. The drapery was a fine black lace scarf, which swept around the roses and tied loosely on the breast; and it gave the quiet little woman a queenly air. She was getting used to seeing her own face in strange adornments, but it startled her to see that she really looked handsome in this bonnet. She stood before the transformation in the mirror almost in awe, and never heard what Miss Brower was saying:

      “That’s just the thing for best, and there’s a lovely lace wrap in the cloak department she ought to have to go with it. It would be charming.”

      “Get it,” said Donald with respectful brevity. He was astonished himself at the difference mere clothes made. Aunt Crete was fairly impressive in her new bonnet. And the lace wrap proved indeed to be the very mate to the bonnet, hiding the comfortable figure, and making her look “just like other people,” as she breathlessly expressed it after one glance at herself in the lace wrap.

      They bought a plain black bonnet, a sweet little gray one, a fine silk umbrella, a lot of pretty belts and handkerchiefs, some shoes and rubbers, a hand-bag of cut steel, for which Luella would have bartered her conscience—what there was left of it; and then they smiled good-by at Miss Brower, and left her for a little while, and went to lunch.

      Such a lunch! Soup, and fish, and spring lamb, and fresh peas, and new potatoes, and two kinds of ice-cream in little hard sugar cases that looked like baked snow-balls. Aunt Crete’s hand trembled as she took the first spoonful. The wonders of the day had been so great that she was fairly worn out, and two little bright red spots of excitement had appeared in her cheeks, but she was happy! Happier than she remembered ever to have been in her life before. Her dear old conscience had a moment of sighing that Luella could not have been there to have enjoyed it too, and then her heart bounded in wicked gleefulness that Luella was not there to stop her nice time.

      They went into a great hall in the same store, and sat among the palms and coolness made by electric fans, while a wonderful organ played exquisite music, and Aunt Crete felt she certainly was in heaven without the trouble of dying; and she never dreamed, dear soul, that she had been dying all her life that others might live, and that it is to such that the reward is promised.

      They went back to Miss Brower later; and behold! the silver-gray silk had been cut out, and was ready to fit. Aunt Crete felt it was fairy-work, the whole of it, and she touched the fabric as if it had been made by magic.

      Then they went and bought a trunk and a handsome leather satchel, and Donald took a notion that his aunt must have a set of silver combs for her hair such as he saw in the hair of another old lady.

      “Now,” said Donald reflectively, “we’ll go home and get rested, and to-morrow we’ll come down and buy any things we’ve forgotten.”

      “And I’m sure I don’t see what more a body could possibly need,” said Aunt Crete, as, tired and absolutely contented, she climbed into the train and sat down in the hot plush seat.

      The one bitter drop in the cup of bliss came the next morning—or rather two drops—in the shape of letters. One from Aunt Carrie for Donald was couched in stiffest terms, in which she professed to have just heard of his coming, and to be exceedingly sorry that she was not at home, and was kept from returning only by a sprained ankle, the doctor telling her that she must not put her foot to the ground for two or three weeks yet, or she would have to suffer for it.

      The other letter was for Aunt Crete, and was a rehash of the telephone message, with a good sound scolding for having gone away from the telephone before she finished speaking. Luella had written it herself because she felt like venting her temper on some one. The young man that had been so attentive to her in town had promenaded the piazza with