It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is her own son, is my favourite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from Aunt Adeline’s shoulder beyond Miss Clinton how she was enjoying that, and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time Aunt Bettie paused for breath.  I couldn’t say a word about the fish and Aunt Adeline wouldn’t!  I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a thread viciously and said, “Humph,” as she rose to start the tea-party home.

* * * * *

That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank exhausted in a chair in front of my mirror and put my head down on my arms and cried the real tears you cry when nobody is looking.  I felt terribly old and ugly and dowdy and—­widowed.  It couldn’t have been jealousy, for I just love that girl.  I want most awfully to hug her very slimness, and it was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in Hillsboro, or Paris, could possibly feel on the subject, that hurt so hard.  But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you won’t know him in the morning, for something made me sit up suddenly with a spark in my eyes and reach out to the desk for my pencil and cheque-book.  It took me more than an hour to reckon it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though in prospects a poorer woman.

As I sat in the train on my way to town early the next morning I thought a good deal about poor Mr. Carter.  After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he made money, and his kindness in leaving it to me, since, for the first time in my life, I fully realised what it could buy.  And I bought things!

First I went to see Madam Courtier for corsets.  I had heard about her, and I knew it meant a fortune.  But that didn’t matter!  She came in and looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word, and then she ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the superfluous flesh just walking off of me.  It was delicious!

Then she and two girls wearing fashionable frocks and fashionable hair came in and did things to a corset they laced on me that I can’t even write down, for I didn’t understand the process, but when I looked in that long glass I almost dropped on the floor.  I wasn’t tight and I wasn’t stiff, and I looked—­I’m too modest to write how lovely I really looked to myself.  I was spellbound with delight.

Next I signed the cheque for three of those wonders with my head so in the clouds I didn’t know what I was doing, but I came to with a jolt when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black silk bag I had worn down to the West End.  I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Clinton, from the horror I felt when I looked at myself.  The girl was really sympathetic and said with a smile that was true kindness:  “Shall I call a taxi for madame and have it take her to Klein’s?  They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready to be fitted at short notice.  Really, madame’s figure is such that it commands a perfect costume now.”