perhaps the more of the spring-time there
is in them.

Marion Kent bloomed out this clear, sweet, clean summer morning in a
span new tea-colored zephyrine polonaise with three little frills
edged with tiny brown braid, which set it off trimly with the due
contrasting depth of color, and cost nearly nothing except the
stitches and the kerosene she burned late in the hot July nights in
her only time for finishing it. She had covered her little old
curled leaf of a hat with a tea-colored corner that had been left,
and puffed it up high and light to the point of the new style, with
brown veil tissue that also floated off in an abundant cloudy grace
behind; and she had such an air of breezy and ecstatic elegance as
she came beaming and hastening into the early car, that nobody
really looked down to see that the underskirt was the identical
black brilliantine that had done service all the spring in the
dismal mornings of waterproofs and india-rubbers and general damp
woolen smells and blue nips and shivers.

Marion Kent always made you think of things that never at all
belonged to her. She gave you an impression of something that she
seemed to stand for, which she could not wholly be. Her zephyrine,
with its silky shine, hinted at the real lustres of far more costly
fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these
things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!)
put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and
flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came
airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen"
train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent,
flushed and conscious and glad with the turning of all admiring eyes
upon it; her face, even, without being absolutely beautiful,
sparkled out at you a certain will and force and intent of beauty
that shot an idea or suggestion of brilliant prettiness instantly
through your unresisting imagination, compelling you to fill out
whatever was wanting; and what more, can you explain, do feature and
bearing that come nearest to perfect fulfillment effect?

The middle-aged cabinet-maker looked over his newspaper at her as
she came in; he had little daughters of his own growing up to
girlhood, and there might have been some thought in his head not
purely admiring; but still he looked up. The knot of office-boys,
crowding and skylarking across a couple of seats, stopped their
shuffle and n