eft the earth pretty much as they had found it
before they fell in love.

It was a week before her wedding, and she stood in the centre of the
spare room in the west wing, which had been turned over to Miss Willy
Whitlow. The little seamstress knelt now at her feet, pinning up the hem
of a black silk polonaise, and turning her head from time to time to ask
Mrs. Pendleton if she was "getting the proper length." For a quarter of
a century, no girl of Virginia's class had married in Dinwiddie without
the crowning benediction of a black silk gown, and ever since the
announcement of Virginia's betrothal her mother had cramped her small
economies in order that she might buy "grosgrain" of the best quality.

"Is that right, mother? Do you think I might curve it a little more in
front?" asked the girl, holding her feet still with difficulty because
she felt that she wanted to dance.

"No, dear, I think it will stay in fashion longer if you don't shorten
it. Then it will be easier to make over the more goods you leave in it."

"It looks nice on me, doesn't it?" Standing there, with the stiff silk
slipping away from her thin shoulders, and the dappled sunlight falling
over her neck and arms through the tawny leaves of the paulownia tree in
the garden, she was like a slim white lily unfolding softly out of its
sheath.

"Lovely, darling, and it will be so useful. I got the very best quality,
and it ought to wear forever."

"I made Mrs. William Goode one ten years ago, and she's still wearing
it," remarked Miss Willy, speaking with an effort through a mouthful of
pins.

A machine, which had been whirring briskly by the side window, stopped
suddenly, and the girl who sewed there--a sickly, sallow-faced creature
of Virginia's age, who was hired by Mrs. Pendleton, partly out of
charity because she supported an invalid father who had been crippled in
the war, and partly because, having little strength and being an
unskilled worker, her price was cheap--turned for an instant and stared
wistfully at the black silk polonaise over the strip of organdie which
she was hemming. All her life she had wanted a black silk dress, and
though she knew that she should probably never have one, and should not
have time to wear it if she ever had, she liked to linger over the
thought of it, very much as Virginia lingered over the thought of her
lover, or as little Miss Willy lingered over the thought of having a
tombstone over her after she was d