curtailed,--something was sure to stop
her somewhere; and the trouble with the new fashions is that they
never stop. To use a phrase she had picked up a few years ago,
"something always got crowded out." She had other work to do, and she
must choose the finishing that would take the shortest time; or satin
folds would cost six dollars more, and she wanted the money to use
differently; the dress was never the first and the _must be_; so it
came by natural development to express herself, not the rampant mode;
and her little ways of "dodging the dressmaker," as she called it,
were sure to be graceful, as well as adroit and decided.

It was a good thing for a girl like Ruth, just growing up to questions
that had first come to this other girl of nineteen four years ago,
that this other had so met them one by one, and decided them half
unconsciously as she went along, that now, for the great puzzle of the
"outside," which is setting more and more between us and our real
living, there was this one more visible, unobtrusive answer put
ready, and with such a charm of attractiveness, into the world.

Ruth walked behind her this morning, with Dakie Thayne, thinking how
"achy" Elinor Hadden's puffs and French-blue bands, and bits of
embroidery looked, for the stitches somebody had put into them, and
the weary starching and ironing and perking out that must be done for
them, beside the simple hem and the one narrow basque ruffling of
Leslie's cambric morning-dress, which had its color and its set-off in
itself, in the bright little carnations with brown stems that figured
it. It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie
had said when she chose it. She "dodged" a great deal in the mere
buying.

Leslie and Ruth got together in the wood-hollow, where the little
vines and ferns began. Leslie was quick to spy the bits of creeping
Mitchella, and the wee feathery fronds that hid away their miniature
grace under the feet of their taller sisters. They were so pretty to
put in shells, and little straight tube-vases. Dakie Thayne helped
Rose and Elinor to get the branches of white honeysuckle that grew
higher up.

Rose walked with the young cadet, the arms of both filled with the
fragrant-flowering stems, as they came up homeward again. She was full
of bright, pleasant chat. It just suited her to spend a morning so, as
if there were no rooms to dust and no tables to set, in all the great
sunshiny world; but as if dews