Reflection caused her to think more highly of the work itself.  It would afford her a chance to explain to the women of Benham, and indirectly to the country at large, that taste in dress was not necessarily inconsistent with virtue and serious intentions—­a truth of which she herself had become possessed since her marriage and which it seemed to her might be utilized delightfully in her department.  She would endeavor to treat dress from the standpoint of ethical responsibility to society, and to show that both extravagance and dowdy homeliness were to be avoided.  Clothes in themselves had grown to be a satisfaction to her, and any association of vanity would be eliminated by the introduction of a serious artistic purpose into a weekly commentary concerning them.  Accordingly she accepted the position and entered upon its duties with grave zeal.

For each of these contributions Selma was to receive eight dollars—­four hundred a year, which she hoped to expand to a thousand by creative literary production—­preferably essays and poetry.  She hired a room in the same neighborhood as Mrs. Earle, in the boarding-house district appurtenant to Central Avenue—­that is to say, on the ragged edge of Benham’s social artery, and set up her new household gods.  The interest of preparing the first paper absorbed her to the exclusion of everything else.  She visited all the dress-making and dry-goods establishments in town, examined, at a hint from Mrs. Earle, the fashion departments of the New York papers, and then, pen in hand, gave herself up to her subject.  The result seemed to her a happy blending of timely philosophy and suggestions as to toilette, and she took it in person to the editor.  He saw fit to read it on the spot.  His brow wrinkled at first and he looked dubious.  He re-read it and said with some gusto, “It’s a novelty, but I guess they’ll like it.  Our women readers have been used to fashion notes which are crisp and to the point, and the big houses expect to have attention called to the goods they wish to sell.  If you’ll run over this again and set your cold facts in little paragraphs by themselves every now and then, I shouldn’t wonder if the rest were a sort of lecture course which will catch them.  It’s a good idea.  Next time you could work in a pathetic story—­some references to a dead baby—­verses—­anecdotes—­a little variety.  You perceive the idea?”

“Oh, yes,” said Selma, appropriately sober at the allusion yet ecstatic.  “That’s just what I should like to do.  It would give me more scope.  I wish my articles to be of real use—­to help people to live better, and to dress better.”

“That’s right, that’s right; and if they make the paper sell, we’ll know that folks like them,” responded the editor with Delphic urbanity.