grasping her trunk, as though defending it from an assailant.

The maid looked at her mistress. 'Miss Foster will ring, Benson, if she
wants you'--said Miss Manisty; and the black-robed elderly maid, breathing
decorous fashion and the ways of 'the best people,' turned, gave a swift
look at Miss Foster, and left the room.

'Are you sure, my dear? You know she would make you tidy in no time. She
arranges hair beautifully.'

'Oh quite--quite sure!--thank you,' said the girl with the same eagerness.
'I will be ready,--right away.'

Then, left to herself, Miss Foster hastily opened her box and took out some
of its contents. She unfolded one dress after another,--and looked at them
unhappily.

'Perhaps I ought to have let cousin Izza give me those things in Boston,'
she thought. 'Perhaps I was too proud. And that money of Uncle Ben's--it
might have been kinder--after all he wanted me to look nice'--

She sat ruefully on the ground beside her trunk, turning the things over,
in a misery of annoyance and mortification; half inclined to laugh too
as she remembered the seamstress in the small New England country town,
who had helped her own hands to manufacture them. 'Well, Miss Lucy, your
uncle's done real handsome by you. I guess he's set you up, and no mistake.
There's no meanness about him!'

And she saw the dress on the stand--the little blonde withered head of the
dressmaker--the spectacled eyes dwelling proudly on the masterpiece before