dryly.

"Well, it is, Susie. You've got lots more money now than you know what
to do with: you don't need that money at all."

"Don't I?"

"No, you don't, Susie: you know you don't. You never go into society,
and you wear your dresses the same way all the time, just as Grandma
Summerhaze does. But I'm just making my _debut_"--and Gertrude flushed
and tossed her head with a pretty confusion, because she was conscious
of having made a sounding speech--"and I need lots of things, such as
the rest of the girls have."

"My dear Gertrude," began Brother Tom, "'beauty unadorned'--"

"Oh, do, pray, Tom, have mercy upon us!" Gertrude said testily.
"Unfortunately, I happen not to be a beauty, so I need some adorning.
Moreover, I don't admit that beauty can do without adorning. There's
Minnie Lathrop: she's a beauty, but she wouldn't improve herself by
leaving off flowers and ribbons and laces, and dressing herself like
a nun. Dear me! she does have the loveliest things! Mine are so shabby
beside them. I'm about the tag-end of our set, anyhow, in matters of
dress. I think, Susie, you might give me a hundred or two dollars."

"To waste in ribbons and bonnets?" asked business-woman Susan.

"Why, Susie, how you do talk! A body would think you had never worn a
ribbon, and that you'd gone bareheaded all the days of your life. But
you needn't talk: it's not so long ago but I can remember when you
were as fond of dress as any girl in the city. I remember how you used
to tease mamma for pretty things."

"Which I never got, even though I was earning them over and over."
Susan spoke half sadly, half bitterly.

"Well, you ought to have had nice things, Susie, when you were in
society," Gertrude insisted. "Girls can't get married if they're
shabby and old-fashioned."

"That's true," said Susan gravely.

"I think," continued her sister, "it's the meanest feeling, the
sheep-ish-est"--Gertrude syllabled the word to make sure of her hold
on it--"in this world to know that the gentlemen are ashamed to show
you attention. Now, I'm cleverer and better-looking than lots of girls
in our set--Delia Spaulding, for instance--but I don't have half the
attention she receives, just on account of her fixings and furbelows."

"And Miss Spaulding always manages to keep ahead in those
sublimities," said Brother Tom.

"Yes," assented Gertrude briskly. "No matter what on earth the rest
of us girls get, Delia Spaulding manages to have something to