."

Mrs. Brady read this note with satisfaction and handed it over to her
daughter to read with a gleam of triumph in her eyes at the supper-table.
She knew the gift of the pink parasol would go far toward reconciling Aunt
Nan to the addition to their party. Elizabeth never did things by halves,
and the parasol would be all that could possibly be desired without
straining the family pocketbook any further.

So Elizabeth went to the picnic in a cool white dimity, plainly made, with
tiny frills of itself, edged with narrow lace that did not shout to the
unknowing multitude, "I am real!" but was content with being so; and with
a white Panama hat adorned with only a white silken scarf, but whose
texture was possible only at a fabulous price. The shape reminded
Elizabeth of the old felt hat belonging to her brother, which she had worn
on her long trip across the continent. She had put it on in the hat-store
one day; and her grandmother, when she found how exquisite a piece of
weaving the hat was, at once purchased it for her. It was stylish to wear
those soft hats in all sorts of odd shapes. Madam Bailey thought it would
be just the thing for the seashore.

Her hair was worn in a low coil in her neck, making the general appearance
and contour of her head much as it had been three years before. She wore
no jewelry, save the unobtrusive gold buckle at her belt and the plain
gold hatpin which fastened her hat. There was nothing about her which
marked her as one of the "four hundred." She did not even wear her gloves,
but carried them in her hand, and threw them carelessly upon the table
when she arrived in Flora Street. Long, soft white ones, they lay there in
their costly elegance beside Lizzie's post-card album that the
livery-stable man gave her on her birthday, all the long day while
Elizabeth was at Willow Grove, and Lizzie sweltered around under her pink
parasol in long white silk gloves.

Grandmother Brady surveyed Elizabeth with decided disapproval. It seemed
too bad on this her day of triumph, and after she had given a hint, as it
were, about Lizzie's fine clothes, that the girl should be so blind or
stubborn or both as to come around in that plain rig. Just a common white
dress, and an old hat that might have been worn about a livery-stable. It
was mortifying in the extreme. She expected a light silk, and kid gloves,
and a beflowered hat. Why, Lizzie looked a great deal finer. Did Mrs.
Bailey rig her out this way f