not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
Pettit?

CHAPTER V: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
WHITE GOWN

Chapter V

IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN

With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
contents.

She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
expectantly at what was revealed.

After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...

But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
mother's wedding gown.

For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
knew would have b