the store she held up her hands and shuddered.

"Never, Madam, never _pour vous_. _Ravissant, charmant_--it is
to fool. Nevair! _Jamais, jamais de la vie!_" I had to calm her
down and she kissed my hand when we parted.

I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed
the check which would be good for a house and lot and motor-car for him,
but he didn't. Only he got even with me by saying: "And I am delighted
that the trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, Mrs. Carter."

That was an awful shock and I hope I didn't show it as I murmured:
"Perfectly, thank you."

The word "trousseau" can be spoken in a woman's presence for many years
with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first _really_
hears it. I felt funny all afternoon as I packed those trunks for the
five o'clock train.

Yes, the word "trousseau" ought to have a definite surname after it
always and that's why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the
light of my conscience. The thinking of him had a strange effect on me.
I had laid out the dream in dark gray-blue rajah, tailored almost beyond
endurance, to wear home on the train and had thrown the old black
taffeta bag across the chair to give to the hotel maid, but the decision
of the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious
blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind
of panic of respect.

I would lots rather have bought poor Mr. Carter the monument I have been
planning for months to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline, than wear
that dress again. I felt conscience reprove me once more with loyalty
looking on in disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for the last
time, because I really ought to have stayed over a day to buy that
monument, but--to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so desperately
that his "sleep-place" above my heart hurt as if it might have prickly
heat break out at any minute.

So I hurried and stuffed the gray-blue darling in the top tray, lapped
old black taffeta around my waist and belted it in with a black belt off
a new green linen I had made for morning walks, down to the drug store
on the public square, I suppose. That is about the only morning
dissipation in Hillsboro that I can think of, and it all depends on whom
you meet, how much of a dissipation it is.

The next thing that happens after you have done a noble deed is, you
either regard it as a reward of virtue or as a punis