What a bright idea!  Strange that it had never occurred to Mrs. Coombe to arrange things so easily.  It was very, very clever and kind of Miss Milligan to think of it.  But—­people might talk!  Think how upset the doctor would be if their innocent little plot were spoken of abroad.  People are so unkind, quite horrid in fact.  And as Esther and the doctor were doing it all for her good they would naturally hate to have their actions misunderstood.  Of course, Mrs. Coombe knew that Miss Milligan herself would never mention it to a soul.  She felt quite sure of that, still—­as it did not appear how the little plot could be spread abroad under those circumstances unless the lay-figure in the corner should become communicative, Mrs. Coombe’s sentence remained plaintively unfinished.  Miss Milligan, in spite of its being so very unnecessary, found herself promising solemnly never to mention it.

As the whole thing was entirely unpremeditated it seemed like a special piece of good luck that Mrs. Coombe should have at that moment in her pocket a note to the druggists (who were not called druggists, exactly) and that all she needed to do was to add Miss Milligan’s address, and hand to that lady sufficient money to secure a postal note as an enclosure.  She did this very quickly and the whole little affair was satisfactorily disposed of when Esther was seen coming hurriedly down the street.

“I thought,” said Esther, who entered a little out of breath and with a worried pucker between her eyes, “I thought that I would just run in and see how the linings look.”

“You can never tell anything from linings,” said Miss Milligan in an injured tone.  “Gracious!  I don’t suppose any one would ever want a dress if they went by the way the linings look.  I always advise my customers never to look in the glass until I get to the material, what with seams on the wrong side and all!”

“There is really nothing at all to see as yet,” assented Mrs. Coombe crossly.

Esther seated herself by the open window.

“Very well,” she said quietly.  “I won’t look.  I’ll just wait.”

Mrs. Coombe shrugged her shoulders and displaced a pin or two.  There was an injured look upon her face and Miss Milligan, replacing the pins, wondered how it is that nice girls like Esther Coombe never see when they’re not wanted.

The fitting went quickly forward.  Mrs. Coombe seemed to have lost all her genial expansiveness.  Miss Milligan’s pins had overflowed from her pin-cushion into her mouth and Esther, who appeared tired, gazed steadily out of the window.  Only the humming of the machines in the adjoining workroom and the subdued talk and laughter of Miss Milligan’s young ladies saved the silence from becoming oppressive.  Occasionally, when her supply of pins became exhausted, Miss Milligan would contribute a cooing murmur to the effect that it did “set beautiful across the shoulders” or that “the long line over the hip was quite elegant.”