mournin', an' if
anything didn't, she'd have a nice dress to wear out places. Ain't it
real convenient,--white standin' for both companies an' the tomb, so?"

And "Mis' Photographer Sturgis has the best of it, bein' an invalid,
till a party comes up," said Libbie Liberty. "She gets plenty enough
food sent in, an' flowers, an' such things, an' she's got nails hung
full o' what I call sympathy clo'es, to wear durin' sympathy calls. But
when it comes to a real what you might say dress-up dress, I guess
she'll hev to be took worse with her side an' stay in the house."

Abigail Arnold contributed:--

"Seems Mis' Doctor Helman had a whole wine silk dress put away with her
dyin' things. She always thought it sounded terrible fine to hear about
the dead havin' dress-pattern after dress-pattern laid away that hadn't
never been made up. So she'd got together the one, but now she an'
Elzabella are goin' to work an' make it up. I guess Mis' Helman thinks
her stomach is so much better 't mebbe she'll be spared till after the
holidays when the sales begin."

Even Liddy Ember had promised to go and to take Ellen, and Ellen went up
and down the winter streets singing sane little songs about the party,
save on days when she "come herself again," and then she planned, as
wildly as anybody, what she meant to wear. And Liddy, whose dream had
always been to do "reg'lar city dress-makin', with helpers an' plates
an' furnish the findin's at the shop," and whose lot instead had been to
cut and fit "just the durable kind," was blithely at work night and day
on Mis' Postmaster Sykes's tobacco-brown net. We understood that there
were to be brown velvet butterflies stitched down the skirt, and if her
Lady Washington geranium flowered in time,--Mis' Sykes was said to lay
bread and milk nightly about the roots to encourage it,--she was to wear
the blossom in her hair. ("She'll be gettin' herself talked about,
wearin' a wreath o' flowers on her head, so," said some.) But then, Mis'
Sykes was recognized to be "one that picks her own steps."

"Mis' Sykes always dresses for company accordin' to the way she gets her
invite," Calliope observed. "A telephone invite, she goes in somethin'
she'd wear home afternoons. Word o' mouth at the front door, she wears
what she wears on Sundays. Written invites, she rags out in her rill
_best_ dress, for parties. But _engraved_," Calliope mounted to her
climax, "a bran' new dress an' a wreath in her hair is the l