She disrobed nonchalantly, hanging her garments against the sheet that ran round the wall for their protection. She pretended not to see the nudges of the girls but her heart sang a paean of triumph.
Yea—weep for her, ye wise ones! Sallie’s day had come. She had fallen from grace. Worse, actually reveled in her downfall! That very morning, without a struggle, she had gone to the bank and wantonly depleted her little horde. There had followed a wild debauch of spending such as her own mother had indulged in years before. Silks, laces, chiffons, feathers! Shades of Scotland, the Irish had won out!
And having recklessly started at high speed, she could not stop. She had no desire to. Ridicule she might have endured indefinitely, but nightly to sit opposite to Mr. James Fowler Patterson in his perfectly tailored clothes, conscious of the variety and extent of them, _that_ had been the straw that broke the backbone of resistance.
Once and once only had Mr. Jimmie essayed the rôle of godfather. Reaching home one evening after a long drive in the moonlight, he had followed her up the ladder-like steps to the dim vestibule. Standing there, he had clasped quickly round her wrist a narrow glittering bracelet.
Sallie’s gaze had fastened on the jewels that laughed up through semi-darkness.
“Oh—I—couldn’t!” she breathed at last. And don’t imagine it was easy.
“But if I ask you? I’m crazy about you, Baby. Never was so keen on a girl in my life.”
Sallie gulped hard and, without looking at it, unclasped the clinging circlet.
“Please,” he protested as she handed it back. “Please—dear!”
“But I want to see you in pretty things. I want you to have them.”
“Thanks, Jimmie,—for wanting to give it to me. But you mustn’t—ever do that again. It wouldn’t be right for me to take it.”
And Jimmie had been forced to content himself with flowers and kid gloves and perfume—French stuff at eight-eighty an ounce.
That phrase of his, however—“I want to see you in pretty things”—clung to her consciousness. She wanted him to see her in them. She wanted to see herself in them. She wanted those girls to see her in them.
After which the savings bank simply flew to meet her.
“Well,” observed Miss Mallard, still devouring the new costume, “I’m glad you’re learning how to handle him.”