Mildred was fumbling at the parcel in her lap. "I've always said one thing, that if ever I got married, Miss Dale was going to make my wedding dress. I can sew well enough for ordinary clothes, but a wedding dress is sort of special. That calls for a regular dressmaker, and there ain't but one dressmaker in Clematis that counts." "When's the wedding to be?" Persis asked. A sudden sinking of the heart foretold the answer. "It's a week from Saturday. It's so sudden that I can hardly believe it myself. We didn't think we could be married for a year, anyway, but Jim got a raise unexpected. They're going to send him West, and he's bound I shall go when he does." The parcel was unwrapped at last, its shimmering white contents contrasting with the girl's shabby dress and work-roughened hands, much as the dreams of the wedding-day contrast with the hard realities that follow. Persis looked, hesitated, thought of the filmy gray, just cut and awaiting basting, thought of the hopes that linked the present with her lost girlhood, and ended as she had always ended, by unselfish surrender. "It's pretty goods," she said, touching it lightly with the tips of her fingers. "And--and there's nothing I like better to make than wedding clothes, my dear." Certain important details came up for discussion, interrupted frequently by the outgushing of Mildred's artless confidences, to all of which Persis listened patiently. And when the girl took her departure, the impulse which had manifested itself on her arrival proved too strong to resist. She kissed Persis good-by, and Persis returned the kiss. The rudimentary beginnings of a new gray gown were bundled together and tucked away to wait their fate, while Persis worked till a late hour on Mildred Chase's wedding dress. But tired as she was, with that undercurrent of depression which sometimes most unjustly is the attendant on generous sacrifice, she found time to write a letter to a gentleman named Thompson, in care of the Hollenden Hotel, Cleveland. "Mr. W. Thompson: "Dear Sir--Yours received. Nothing could be further from my wish than to keep anything that belongs to somebody else, but you can understand that I don't feel like sending a young lady's letter to the first man who happens to ask for it, especially as Thompson is not what you would call an unusual name. If the young lady who wrote the letter will drop me a line asking me to forward it to you, I'll be happy to oblige her. She won't even have to write any thing but her first name, unless she likes. "Yours truly, "Persis Dale. "P. S. If the young lady will tell me your full name, when she writes, it will make you a lot surer to get the letter. W. Thompson is a name that fits lots of people." This epistolary weight off her conscience, Persis went up-stairs to bed, and for the first time in twenty years, she went without a good night to the photograph in the blue plush frame. CHAPTER X SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT