such a one? If you thought that my
wishing and--aspiring--would ever bring me such as that, I'd sure try."

There rose a titter about the two. It spread and swelled till the whole
assembly was in a gale of laughter. Miss Sessions's becoming blush
deepened to the tint of angry mortification. She looked about and
assumed the air of a schoolmistress with a room full of noisy pupils;
but Johnnie, her cheeks pink too, first swept them all with an
astonished gaze which flung the long lashes up in such a wide curve of
innocence as made her eyes bewitching, then joined it, and laughed as
loud as any of them at she knew not what. It was the one touch to put
her with the majority, and leave her mentor stranded in a bleak
minority. Miss Sessions objected to the position.

"Oh, John!" she said severely, so soon as she could be heard above the
giggles. "How you have misunderstood me, and Mrs. Archbold, and all we
intended to bring to you! What is a mere blouse like this to the uplift,
the outlook, the development we were striving to offer? I confess I am
deeply disappointed in you."

This sobered Johnnie, instantly.

"I'm sorry," she said, bending forward to lay a wistful, penitent hand
on that of Miss Sessions. "I'll try to understand better. I reckon I'm
right dumb, and you'll have to have a lot of patience with me. I don't
rightly know what to aspire after."

The amende was so sweetly made that even Lydia Sessions, still
exceedingly employed at being pictorially chagrined over the depravity
of her neophyte, could but be appeased.

"I'll try to furnish you more suitable objects for your ambition," she
murmured virtuously.

But the lady with the gray hair and the odd little twist to her smile
now leaned forward and took a hand in the conversation.

"See here, Lydia," Mrs. Hexter remonstrated in crisp tones, "what's the
matter with the girl's aspiring after a blouse like yours? You took a
lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to get that one. I noticed you
were careful to tell me it was imported, because I couldn't see the
neck-band and find out that detail for myself. That blouse is a
dream--it's a dream. If it's good enough aspiration for you or me, why
not for this girl?"

"Oh, but Mrs. Hexter," murmured the mortified Miss Sessions, glancing
uneasily toward the mill-girl contingent which was listening eagerly,
and then at the speaker of the day, "I am sure Mrs. Archbold will agree
with me that it would be a gross, ma