“Can't I do anything with this barege? It's one of my favorite dresses, and I hate to give it up.”
“You wore that thoroughly out, and it's only fit for the rag-bag. Yes, it was very pretty and becoming, I remember, but its day is over.”
Fanny let the dress lie in her lap a minute as she absently picked at the fringe, smiling to herself over the happy time when she wore it last and Sydney said she only needed cowslips in her lap to look like spring. Presently she folded it up and put it away with a sigh, but it never went into the rag-bag, and my sentimental readers can understand what saved it.
“The ball dresses had better be put nicely away till next year,” began Polly, coming to a rainbow colored heap.
“My day is over, I shall never use them again. Do what you like with them,” said Fan calmly.
“Did you ever sell your cast-off finery, as many ladies do?” asked Polly.
“Never; I don't like the fashion. I give it away, or let Maud have it for tableaux.”
“I wonder if you would mind my telling you something Belle proposed?”
“If it's an offer to buy my clothes, I should mind,” answered Fanny, sharply.
“Then I won't,” and Polly retired behind a cloud of arsenic-green gauze, which made her look as if she had the cholera.
“If she wanted to buy that horrid new'gooseberry-colored gown,' as Tom calls it, I'd let her have it cheap,” put in Maud, who was of a practical turn.
“Does she want it, Polly?” asked Fan, whose curiosity got the better of her pride.
“Well, she merely asked me if I thought you'd be mortally offended, if she offered to take it off your hands, as you'd never worn it. You don't like it, and in another season it will be all out of fashion,” said Polly from her verdant retreat.
“I saw she meant it kindly, so I said I'd ask. Now between ourselves, Fan, the price of that dress would give you all you'll want for your spring fixings, that's one consideration; then here's another, which may have some weight with you,” added Polly slyly. “Trix told Belle she was going to ask you for the dress, as you would n't care to wear it now. That made Belle fire up, and say it was a mean thing to do without offering some return for a costly thing like that; and then Belle said, in her blunt way, 'I'll give Fan all she paid for it, and more, too, if it will be any help to her. I don't care for the dress, but I'd like to slip a little money into her pocket, for I know she needs it and is too good to ask dear Mr. Shaw for anything she can get on without.'”