That there was some uncertainty as to the exact meaning of the request
to wear "full dress" may be gathered from Mrs. Abe Tutts's observation,
while drying a few dank hairs at Mrs. Jackson's front gate, that it was
lucky she had not ripped up her accordion-pleated skirt which was as
full as anybody could wear and hope to get around in!
"'Tain't that," Mrs. Jackson snorted in her face. "The fuller a dress is
the less they is of it. You're thinkin' of a masquerade, maybe.
Personally myself," declared Mrs. Jackson modestly, "I don't aim to
expose my shoulder blades for nobody--not for _nobody_."
"I'd do it if I was you," replied Mrs. Tutts significantly.
"Why, if you was me?" inquired Mrs. Jackson, biting guilelessly.
"Because"--Mrs. Tutts backed out of reach.--"they's a law agin' carryin'
concealed weapons."
Mrs. Tutts did not tarry to complete the drying of her hair, for Mrs.
Jackson had succeeded in wrenching a paling from the fence and was
fumbling at the catch on the gate.
The dining-room of the Terriberry House was a dazzling sight to the
arriving guests, who were impressed to momentary speechlessness by such
evidences of wealth and elegance as real carnations and smilax and a
real orchestra imported from the nearest large town on the main line.
The sight which held their eyes longest, however, was a large glass bowl
on a table in an anteroom, beside which, self-conscious but splendid in
new evening clothes, stood Mr. Symes urging an unknown but palatable
beverage hospitably upon each arrival.
"This is cert'nly a swell affair," they confided to each other in
whispers behind the back of their hands after the first formal
greetings. "Trust Andy P. for doin' things right."
They frankly stared at each other in unaccustomed garb and sometimes as
frankly laughed.
"Gosh!" said Mr. Terriberry as he sniffed the pungent atmosphere due to
the odor of camphor emanating from clothing which had lain in the
bottom of trunks since the wearers had "wagoned it" in from Iowa or
Nebraska, "looks like you might call this here function a moth ball."
Mr. Terriberry himself gave distinction to the gathering by appearing in
a dinner jacket, borrowed from the tailor, and his pearl gray wedding
trousers, preserved sentimentally by Mrs. Terriberry.
Mr. Abe Tutts, in a frock coat of minstrel-like cut and plum-colored
trousers of shiny diagonal cloth, claimed his share of public attention.
For the sake of that peace which he had come to prize highly, Mr. Tutts
had consented to make a "dude" of himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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