Drusilla with a Million. Elizabeth Cooper
She took Drusilla to one of the exclusive shops on Fifth Avenue. If Daphne had not been known, slight courtesy would have been shown the shabbily dressed old woman, but a few words from Daphne and the salesladies were all smiles and bows, eager to show their best. At first they showed her black dresses; but at Drusilla's little look of distress, quick Daphne saw there was something wrong.
"Don't you like them, Miss Doane?"
"Yes—yes—they're beautiful, Miss Thornton, but—do I have to wear black? I've worn it all my life because it wears well. I'd like—I'd like—"
"Tell me what you would like."
"I'd like a soft gray dress like my room, if I ain't too old. But—but—perhaps it wouldn't be fittin'."
"That's just the thing! Why didn't I think of that! Gray will be just the color for you; and with a touch of blue, and your white hair—Oh, you'll be lovely, Miss Doane."
Again the willing salesladies were given their instructions, and gray dresses and gray suits were placed before her. Drusilla passed over the suits with hardly a look, but fingered lovingly the soft crepes and chiffons.
"I don't like the heavy things," she said. "They look as if they'd turn well, and I don't want nothin' that can be turned. I'd like something that'll wear out."
Daphne laughed.
"You're just like me. I hate things that wear forever. Father says that's the cause of the high cost of living—we women don't buy sensible clothes."
Drusilla looked pained.
"Perhaps I shouldn't look at them then—"
Daphne interrupted her.
"You just buy what you want. Don't you worry about what Father thinks. I don't."
"But I—I—don't want to be extravagant."
"You can't be extravagant. You can't spend too much. Now, don't you think about it—and don't you ask how much they cost. You don't need to know. Just you buy the prettiest things they've got."
Finally a choice was made of two pretty soft gray dresses, fragile enough to suit even Daphne's luxurious tastes; arrangements were made in regard to their hurried alterations; and, after buying a wrap to replace the now discarded mantle, they departed, Drusilla as happy as a child, with a flush on her old cheeks and a strange happy light in her blue eyes.
"Now we must have things to go with them."
They went into a lingerie shop, where Drusilla was dazed by the piles of dainty underclothing that were spread before her. She caressed the soft laces and the delicate, cobweb affairs.
"Oh, Miss Thornton, I can't decide. I didn't know there was such beautiful things in the world! Had I ought to have 'em? Ain't they too young for me?"
"There is no age for underclothing. Don't you want them? Isn't that the loveliest nightgown? Don't you want it?"
"Yes, I'd like to have it, but—" Drusilla thought of her two Canton flannel nightdresses lying in her little trunk.
"Well, you shall have them. And this fluffy gray dressing-gown—it is a dear. We will take that too; and this pretty bed-jacket. Look at the embroidery on it. You must have that, so if you have breakfast in bed—and look at this dear lace cap. When you sit up in bed, with the tray in front of you, and this little jacket on, and the cap, with a little of your hair showing beneath it, why, you'll look nice enough to eat. Now we'll go and buy stockings, pretty gray silk ones, and shoes, and slippers; and we mustn't forget about the milliner. I know the loveliest place; Madame will know just what to give you."
Drusilla enjoyed the milliner's the most of all; for there she tried on hat after hat—not ugly bonnets but cleverly arranged creations for an old lady that seemed to remove the lines from her face and made her feel that perhaps, after all, she could take a part and share in the beautiful things of this new beautiful world, instead of a mere looker on.
At last they were taken to one of the great modistes, a creator of gowns known on two continents, and Daphne had Miss Doane wait in a reception-room while she interviewed the great lady herself. This arbitrator of fashion came smilingly to Miss Doane and with her keen, professional eye saw her "possibilities." She said to Miss Thornton:
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