galleries, or a shopping tour down town where she spent the twenty-five
cents she had earned and saved, gave her another happy day to remember.
Eleanor is now eighteen and she has been at work for two years. She
needs plain becoming dresses, plenty of shirt waists, sensible, pretty
shoes, rubbers, a rain-coat, a suit, two becoming hats, for it is the
beginning of winter. But she has none of these things. She has just
been kneeling before the altar and has laid her costly sacrifice of
common sense and comfort, perhaps of health, there in the presence of
Fashion and Pleasure. Her face is troubled as she sits there in her room
for the memory of her mother's reproof and her brother's disapproval
stings a little. But in a moment she looks toward the bed. Lying upon
it, smoothed out carefully, is the result of the sacrifice--a thin silk
gown of palest blue draped with a fragile chiffon, trimmed and caught up
with crystal drops and tiny rosebuds. It is a pretty thing. Besides it
is a spotless white outing coat, rough, and to quote the words of the
clerk who helped her select it, "exceedingly modish." There are pale
blue stockings and pumps. She did hesitate about the pumps but they were
there. The hat was there too. She hoped to go perhaps to two dances, she
knew she should go to the theater, for she already had an invitation and
there might be another. Besides that she intended to go herself and
invite one of the girls if she were able to get all the things paid for
before the theater season was over. Last year everything got shabby so
quickly and "looked like a rag," before the season was over but she
hoped for better luck this time. She rose and put her new possessions
away very carefully in the little closet and boxes and turned to the
mirror. The hair dresser had shown her a new way to dress her hair and
she tried it now herself. After a long time she met with fair success.
She did not call the family to see the result, for there might be more
words of disapproval and though they would not influence her in the
least still it was a bore to listen to them. The new arrangement was