Just at what point Freda gave in, just at what point she felt that the possibilities of her trip outweighed its impossibilities she did not know. It was certain that the young Brownleys gave way to no noisier public mockery of the proposed visit than did Freda. She was even a little shrill. She told everybody how she “hated it,” how she was going along to the homes of the idle rich to chaperon her mother, that she was “breaking into high society,” that she was gathering material for a book on “how the other half lives,” that she would probably be mistaken for a housemaid and asked to dust the bed-rooms, that mother was trying to “marry her off,” that she “didn’t have an idea what to wear.” She talked to almost every one she met, somewhat unnecessarily, somewhat defiantly, as if determined to let any one know about her reasons for going, as if defending herself against any accusations concerning her motive in making such a visit, perhaps making sure that no later discomfiture on her own part could be made more severe by any suspicion of pleasurable anticipation. She planned her clothes for St. Pierre with mocking but intense deliberation. A dark blue tricotine dress--she bought that at the ladies’ specialty shop and taking it home ripped off all the trimming substituting the flattest and darkest of braid. That was safe, she knew. She might not be startling but she would be inoffensive, she told her mother. There was a dress made by Miss Peterson, who sewed by the day, from a remnant of bronze georgette, and half shamefacedly Freda came home one night with a piece of flame colored satin and made it herself into a gown which hung from the shoulders very straightly and was caught at the waist with silver cord (from the drapery department). And there was an evening dress at which Freda scoffed but she and Miss Peterson spent some fascinated hours over it, making pale green taffetas and tulle fit her lovely shoulders. “Though what I’m getting these clothes for is a mystery to me,” grumbled Freda. “They probably won’t even ask me to go out. Probably suggest that I eat with the servants.” Yet she tried on the evening dress in the privacy of her room parading before her bureau mirror, which could not be induced to show both halves of her at once. And as she looked in the glass there came back the reflection of a girl a little flushed, excited, eager, as if in spite of all her mockery there was a dream that she would conquer unknown people and things--a hope that wonders were about to happen. Never was there a trace of that before her mother. Having agreed to go, Freda was, on the whole, complaisant, but on principle unenthusiastic. Her father gave her two hundred dollars the night before she went away. Mrs. Thorstad was at a neighbor’s house and the gift was made in her absence without comment on that fact. Freda, whose idea of a sizable check for her spending money was five dollars and of an exceptionally large one, ten, gasped.