That was, on the whole, the note of the Chicago trip, all the dazzling lights and reflections of which focused, for Sylvia, upon Aunt Victoria’s radiant person.  At times, the resultant beam was almost too much for the young eyes; as, for example, on the next day when the two made a momentous shopping expedition to the largest and finest department store in the city.  “I’ve a curiosity to see,” Aunt Victoria had declared carelessly, “what sort of things are sold in a big Western shop, and besides I’ve some purchases to make for the Lydford house.  Things needs freshening up there.  I’ve thought of wicker and chintz for the living-room.  It would be a change from what I’ve had.  Perhaps it would amuse the children to go along?”

At this, Judith, who had a boy’s detestation of shopping, looked so miserable that Aunt Victoria had laughed out, her frank, amused laugh, and said, “Well, Sylvia and I alone, then!”

“Judith and I’ll go to Lincoln Park to take a walk by the lake,” said Mrs. Marshall.  “Our inland young folks have never seen so much water all at once.”

Sylvia had been, of course, in the two substantial and well-run department stores of La Chance, when she went with her mother to make their carefully considered purchases.  They always went directly to the department in question, where Mrs. Marshall’s concise formula ran usually along such lines as, “I would like to look at misses’ coats, size 16, blue or brown serge, moderate style, price somewhere between ten and fifteen dollars.”  And then they looked at misses’ coats, size 16, blue or brown serge, of the specified price; and picked out one.  Sylvia’s mother was under the impression that she allowed her daughters to select their own clothes because, after all these defining and limiting preliminaries, she always, with a very genuine indifference, abandoned them to their own choice between the four or five garments offered.

Even when Sylvia, as she grew older, went by herself to make a small purchase or two, she was so deeply under the influence of her mother’s example that she felt it unbecoming to loiter, or to examine anything she knew she could not buy.  Besides, nearly all the salespeople, who, for the most part, had been at their posts for many years, knew her from childhood, and if she stopped to look at a show-case of new collars, or jabots, they always came pleasantly to pass the time of day, and ask how her little brother was, and how she liked studying at home.  She was ashamed to show in their presence anything but a casual, dignified interest in the goods they handled.

After these feeble and diluted tipplings, her day with Aunt Victoria was like a huge draught of raw spirits.  That much-experienced shopper led her a leisurely course up one dazzling aisle and down another, pausing ruthlessly to look and to handle and to comment, even if she had not the least intention of buying.  With an inimitable ease of manner she examined whatever took her fancy, and the languid, fashionably dressed salesladies, all in aristocratic black, showed to these whims a smiling deference, which Sylvia knew could come from nothing but the exquisite tailoring of Aunt Victoria’s blue broadcloth.  This perception did not in the least lower her opinion of the value of the deference.  It heightened her opinion of the value of tailoring.