The reigning belle

“Now we are by ourselves, girls,” said James, “I’ll tell you all about it. There was some one else in the garden.”

“Some one else!” exclaimed Ruth.

Eva, blushing vividly over face and bosom, began to arrange the folds of her dress with great earnestness, but said nothing.

“You know who it was, Eva,” said James, with a sly glance. “I’ve seen you walking with him.”

“No, no, James! only as he was coming the same way. Don’t believe it, Ruth. I never did more than that,” cried Eva, eager to defend herself, yet trembling with a sense of shame.

“Who said you did? Oh, Eva! Eva! I’ve found out something. It wasn’t old Storms that gave you this, anyhow!”

Here James held up a little cluster of sweet-scented violets and sprigs of heliotrope, gathered around a moss rose-bud.

“He picked this, Eva, with his own hands. I wish you could have seen what a fuss he made in putting them together. Old Storms offered to help him, but he said, no! he would do that himself. Then he said, ‘Give this to your sister; I know that she is going out to-night, and shall be honored—that’s the word, Eva—honored if she will wear it.’”

Eva took the tiny bouquet and held it, irresolute, casting a shy glance at her sister, who looked gravely, almost reproachfully at her.

James, who was watching them both, broke forth in his boyish impatience.

“There, now, Ruth, don’t be an old maid, and spoil all her fun. She hasn’t done anything, I tell you. Not one quarter as much as all them Fifth Avenue girls are doing every hour of their lives. Now what are you pouting for?”

Ruth smiled again. A sudden doubt had haunted her for a moment, but it passed from her innocent mind like dew from a lily, and all was bright again.

“Who is he, Eva?” she said, reaching out her hand.

“A gentleman, Ruth, if ever one lived. He has been at the store several times, and Mr. Harold introduced him. They went to school together, and—and that is all. Only his name is Lambert—Ivon Lambert.”

“His mother is as proud as if she were governor of North America; but he isn’t—not a bit of it,” broke in James. “The way he talks to me is quite friendly. That fellow, Boyce, now, would never condescend to it, knowing that I ’tend that baby sometimes; just as if he and his red hair was anything particular. If Mr. Lambert had not been a thorough gentleman, I wouldn’t have brought his flowers, anyway. You ought to have known that, Ruth.”

“As if I did not know it,” answered the sweet invalid, penitent and ashamed of the momentary cloud that had come over her. “Eva, dear, let us begin again.”

Ruth gathered up the flowers in her lap, and began to arrange them in glowing clusters, with which she looped back the over-dress.

“Now just a dash of this warm crimson for your hair, and nothing can be more lovely,” she exclaimed, pulling Eva down to her knees, and fastening a red rose and some of the mossiest buds among her braids.

When Eva arose from her knees she held the little cluster of violets in her hand. Looking wistfully down upon the blossoms, she unconsciously took a position, which filled Ruth with the enthusiasm of an artist.

“Oh, if I could paint her now!” she thought.

“Would there be any harm?” questioned Eva, in a low voice, turning her eyes wistfully from the flowers to Ruth’s glowing face. “I—I suppose he would rather expect it. Don’t you?”

Ruth smiled, and held out her hand for the flowers, but Eva pretended not to see her. Even to that gentle hand she would not, for one moment, consign the previous blossoms. So, with a gentle wile of abstraction, she placed the flowers on her bosom, which rose and swelled to their almost imperceptible touch, as waters bear lotus-flowers on their waves.

“Now, isn’t she stunning?” exclaimed James, moving in a circle, and on tiptoe, around the room, afraid of touching the snow-white train with his foot. “That Miss Spicer, who goes down the avenue to meet him, every day at three o’clock, will be nowhere. In fact, I don’t believe there’ll be a handsomer girl at the party to-night. She’s A No. I, and a picked article at that. Hallo! Who’s coming?”

James heard the outer door open, without a knock, and a heavy rustle of silk in the passage. Eva gathered up her dress, and sat down on Ruth’s couch, ashamed of her own beauty, and wondering who the intruder could be. Ruth smiled, and said,

“I dare say it is Mrs. Smith.”

So it was, that good woman in all her glory. She pushed the door wide open; for, with a huge panier added to her own generous proportions, the skirt of her dress turned upward, and thrown over her shoulders, that open space seemed scarcely sufficient to admit her.

“Just run down to give you a look at my dress before the carriage comes,” she exclaimed, flinging an avalanche of red moire antique down from her shoulders, and spreading it along the humble carpet with the pride of a peacock. “What do you think of that, now? Seven dollars a yard, and twenty-five yards, besides trimming. Going it, rather, for a corner groceryman’s wife, isn’t it? But when an old friend asks you, a’most with tears in her eyes, to be at her first party, one can’t refuse to do the thing up brown, which I think Smith and I have done it. Low in the neck, you see, and Marier Antoinet sleeves to say nothing of white kid-boots, with heels like that!”

Here Mrs. Smith lifted her dress and brought to view a high-heeled boot, strained till the buttons threatened to fly off, over a large, dumpty foot, looked exceedingly like an apple-dumpling prepared for cooking.

“There, now, girls, just take a survey of me all round, and give us your opinion; but first, Eva, let me have an observation. All in white, and looking like one of them great swans in the Park; not bad! Though I should like something a little more stylish. You are going as my friend, and I’m anxious about your looking first rate. Still, it’s my candid opinion that you’ll do. Step out here, and let us see how your dress falls. Gracious me, what a train! Longer than mine, I do believe; streaming out like a white banner. Yes, I say it again; you’ll do, Eva! Now just manage a thing or two for me. I couldn’t trust Kate Gorman to put on my head-dress, and brought it along. Stylish, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Smith drew a paper from her pocket, and unfolded a yellow feather, long enough to take in her head at one sweep, which she held up triumphantly.

“See how it curls and quivers; something like a feather, that! Now, I want you to put it on, like a queen wears her crown, over the forehead, round one side, and streaming out behind!”

Eva and Ruth changed glances of dismay. Both hesitated to wound the kind woman’s vanity, but felt that silence would be cruel.

“I would not wear anything on my head, Mrs. Smith; you have such fine hair, it seems a pity to conceal it,” said Ruth. “Let me do some braids, and change it a little. Then you can have nothing more becoming.”

“But I bought the feather a purpose,” answered Mrs. Smith, eyeing her purchase with rueful regret; “and it is such a splendid one, with a contrast to it. That was what the milliner observed when I told her the color of my dress.”

“Still I would not wear it this evening. Eva sees a great many stylish people, you know, and can tell you that feathers like that are not in the fashion for evening-dress, just now.”

“Oh, if she says it, I’ll give in!”

“Then let me change your hair at once. Sit down by me. What quantities of hair, and how long!”

Deftly, and with fingers that seemed to fly through the long tresses of hair, Ruth soon crowned the head of her friend with a matronly coronal of braids, and made some other alterations in her dress, which were submitted to with inward protest. Just as the last touches were given, a carriage drove up, and some one rang the door-bell.

Mrs. Smith sprang to her feet, drew up the skirt of her dress, and ran into the kitchen, protesting that she would not see a stranger for the world. As her dress swept with a rushing and voluminous rustle through one door, Mr. Ross came through the other.