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An Open-Eyed Conspiracy; an Idyl of Saratoga by William Dean Howells
page 105 of 142 (73%)
the theory provisionally, though I knew that her later rejection of
it would be all the more violent for this respite.



CHAPTER XV



There was to be a hop at the Grand Union that night, and I had got
tickets for it in virtue of my relation to Every Other Week. I must
say the clerk who gave them me was very civil about it; he said they
were really only for the hotel guests, but he was glad to give them
to outsiders who applied with proper credentials; and he even
offered me more tickets than I asked for.

Miss Gage was getting a dress for the hop, and it was to be finished
that day. I think women really like the scare of thinking their
dresses will not be done for a given occasion, and so arrange to
have them at the last moment. Mrs. March went with the girl early
in the afternoon to have it tried on for the last time, and they
came home reporting that it was a poem. My wife confided to me that
it was not half done--merely begun, in fact--and would never be
finished in time in the world. She also assured Miss Gage that she
need not be the least uneasy; that there was not an hour's work on
the dress; and that the dress-maker's reputation was at stake, and
she would not dare to fail her. I knew she was perfectly sincere in
both these declarations, which were, indeed, merely the expression
of two mental attitudes, and had no relation to the facts.

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