She seized the opportunity of my having jestingly taken up this load to buckle it on me tight and fast, clasping it here, tying it there, and giving a final pull to the knots that left me scarcely the power to draw my breath, much less the breath to protest. I was forced to hear her say again that all her concern from the beginning was for Mrs. Deering, and that now, if she had offered to do something for Miss Gage, it was not because she cared anything for her, but because she cared everything for Mrs. Deering, who could never lift up her head again at De Witt Point if she went back so completely defeated in all the purposes she had in asking Miss Gage to come with her to Saratoga.
I did not observe that this wave of compassion carried Mrs. March so far as to leave her stranded with Mrs. Deering that evening when we called with Kendricks, and asked her and Miss Gage to go with us to the Congress Park concert. Mrs. Deering said that she had to pack, that she did not feel just exactly like going; and my tender heart ached with a knowledge of her distress. Miss Gage made a faint, false pretence of refusing to come with us, too; but Mrs. Deering urged her to go, and put on the new dress, which had just come home, so that Mrs. March could see it. The girl came back looking radiant, divine, and—“Will it do?” she palpitated under my wife’s critical glance.
“Do? It will _out_do! I never saw anything like it!” The connoisseur patted it a little this way and a little that. “It is a dream! Did the hat come too?”
It appeared that the hat had come too. Miss Gage rematerialised with it on, after a moment’s evanescence, and looked at my wife with the expression of being something impersonal with a hat on.
“Simply, there is nothing to say!” cried Mrs. March. The girl put up her hands to it. “Good gracious! You mustn’t take it off! Your costume is perfect for the concert.”
“Is it, really?” asked the girl joyfully; and she seemed to find this the first fitting moment to say, for sole recognition of our self-sacrifice, “I’m much obliged to you, Mr. March, for getting me that room.”
I begged her not to speak of it, and turned an ironical eye upon my wife; but she was lost in admiration of the hat.