Under the Country SkyRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
General
Under the Country Sky
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
Country life -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
"It's nearly empty now," said the girl softly. "It's bought so much,
Father Davy; I've begun to think it was magic gold! Everybody--all the
shopgirls and women--have helped me spend it. It was as if they knew I
must make it go a long way and wanted to do it. I really think"--she
gave a tremulous little laugh--"it was a good thing I wasn't dressed to
match the car I came in, or they never would have taken the trouble to
hunt up the things I wanted--at the prices I could pay. The fact that I
looked like a shopgirl, too, was such a help!"
"A shopgirl!" repeated her father. "You, my dear? What would Jefferson
say to that? No matter how you were dressed you could not possibly look
anything but what you are."
"Oh, but, Father Davy, dear, you don't know what many and many of the
shopgirls, especially these city girls, look like. There are such
beautiful faces among them, such soft voices, such really charming
manners. Of course there are plenty of the other kind, the cheap and
common sort, but so many of the nice kind! I don't mind looking like
some of them, indeed I don't. And the fact that I'm wearing this little
old summer serge suit, now in December, with this hat, which any clever
girl would know I made myself--well, it has helped me to interest their
sympathies in my search. And now I've found"--her voice sank--"I've
found what I couldn't have expected to find in all New York. And I'm so
glad--so glad--I can't tell you. Look!"
She slowly unwrapped a long, slim, cylinderlike parcel, and brought to
view what it contained. Inclosed in its pasteboard protector, to keep it
unwrinkled in its soft perfection, lay a roll of dark blue silk, of a
small brocaded pattern.
Georgiana silently laid the little blue-silk bag upon it, and held up
the two so that her father could see how close was the resemblance. The
colour was precisely the same, making allowances for the slight dimming
of age; while the design of the brocade was so similar that the two
might have been made in the same period, if not by the same hand.
Mr. Warne studied the two fabrics intently for a moment, then looked
into his daughter's eyes. He was too moved to speak. When she herself
could talk again composedly she told him what she meant to do. The blue
silk, made by her own hands in the three days left her, was to be her
wedding gown. She had bought a little fine lace, fit for such a use,
with which to make the finishing; and no matter what Doctor Jefferson
might think of such a substitute for the customary bridal attire, for
herself she should be far happier than in the finest white silk or satin
that could be bought.
"God bless you, my little girl!" Father Davy murmured, wiping his eyes,
their clear blue depths misty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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