Upstairs, in her own room, Emily stood before a long pier glass arrayed finally in the white bridal gown on which the feminine interest of that house and town had centered for many days. Before her a dressmaker, enacting for this evening the rôle of maid, squatted on her heels, her mouth full of pins; behind her, another dressmaker enacting a similar rôle was carefully, almost reverently, unfolding the long tulle veil; about her were clustered the bridesmaids, all robed in their new gowns. They had been chattering and laughing, but now, in the supreme moment, a silence had fallen--they stood with clasped hands and held their breath. In the center of the room, Dade Emerson stood in her superior office of maid of honor, her head sidewise inclined, her eyes half closed that through the haze of their long black lashes she might estimate with more artistic vision the whole bridal effect. Presently she nodded to the dressmaker, and the patient woman, her own pinched bosom under its black alpaca bodice thrilling strangely with the emotions of a moment that had been denied her, lifted the veil on her extended fingers, and proceeded to the coronation. She piled the white cloud upon the brown coils of Emily's hair; she deftly coaxed it into a shimmering cataract down the silken train of the gown, and then took a step backward, while all the women there raised their clasped hands to their chins in an ecstatic, unisonant sigh. Emily turned her eyes, brilliant with the excitement of this night, toward Dade, who still stood with her head critically poised. Dade nodded. "_C'est bien_," she said. The spell was broken, the chattering began again, and the girls swarmed about for gloves and bouquets, at last seating themselves impatiently to let the maids fasten their furred opera boots. Emily still stood before the long pier glass, looking at her bridal reflection. "Are you all fixed?" said Dade, "with "'Something old and something new, Something borrowed and something blue?'" The bridesmaids looked up with lips apart, awaiting the answer to this all-important question. "My handkerchief is old," said Emily, holding in her fingers a bit of point lace that had been her mother's, "and--let's see--well, I'm pretty much all new to-night." She glanced down at her gown. "Something borrowed--I have nothing borrowed." She looked up soberly, her eyes wide. "Something blue?" one of the girls asked, though the first question had not been disposed of. "Yes, if you'd bean me, running all that blue baby-ribbon in her chemise, you'd think so," said Dade. The bride blushed. "But something borrowed," one of the others insisted. "Yes, something borrowed," assented Emily. "What can I borrow, I wonder?" She looked about helplessly. "Oh say, girls!" one of the bridesmaids exclaimed, "she must have a coin in her slipper!" And the whole bevy chorused its happy acquiescence. Emily, with the sudden air of a queen, unaccustomed to waiting on herself, commanded Dade: