She had chosen a very simple dress, a white muslin frock, that left bare her arms and throat, and was trimmed with pale blue ribbon at the neck and elbow; her stockings, too, were white, but her shoes and her sash a vivid, unexpected scarlet. She turned round slowly before the glass and smiled happily at her clear, fresh girlhood, tossing back her head, so that her hair was shaken out over her shoulders. Surely he would think her beautiful to-night. With eager fingers she tied the blue ribbon in her hair, turned again slowly before the glass, smiled, shook out her hair, and laughed happily. Yes, she would wear the blue--a subdued, quiet color, that faded naturally into the warm brown. She ran downstairs for her family’s approval, stood before her mother and turned a slow circle.
“Of course, dear, I’m quite certain that you’ll be the prettiest girl there whatever you wear.”
“Well, April dear, of course I know you think you know best, but that white frock--it is so very simple.”
“I know they do, dear; you look sweet in anything; but at a big dance like this, where there’ll be so many smart people, they might think--well, I don’t know, dear, but it is very quiet, isn’t it?”
The moment before April had been happy and excited, and now she was crushed and humiliated. She sat down on the edge of a chair, gazing with pathetic pity at her brilliant shoes.
“No, dear. I’m sure you’ll be thankful to me when you get there. Now, why don’t you run upstairs and put on that nice mauve frock of yours?”
“Well then, dear, there’s the green and yellow; you always look nice in that.”
It was a bright affair that her mother had seen at a sale in Brixton and bought at once because it was so cheap. It had never really suited April, whose delicate features needed a simple setting; but her mother did not like to feel that she had made a mistake, and having persuaded herself that the green and yellow was the right color, and matched her daughter’s eyes, had insisted on April’s wearing it as often as possible.
“Yes, my dear, the green and yellow. I’m sure I’m right. Now hurry up; the cab will be here in ten minutes.”
April walked upstairs slowly. She hated that green and yellow; she always had hated it. She took it down from the wardrobe and, holding the ends of the sleeves, stretched out her arms on either side so that the green and yellow dress covered her completely, and then she stood looking at it in the glass.