ago--maybe longer," the nurse told him. "I'll go see." And she
returned from the brief errand, her impression confirmed by
information from Mrs. Adams. "Yes. She went up to Miss Mildred
Palmer's to see what she's going to wear to-night."

Adams looked at Miss Perry wearily, but remained passive,
making no inquiries; for he was long accustomed to what seemed
to him a kind of jargon among ladies, which became the more
incomprehensible when they tried to explain it. A man's best
course, he had found, was just to let it go as so much sound.
His sorrowful eyes followed the nurse as she went back to her
rocking-chair by the window, and her placidity showed him that
there was no mystery for her in the fact that Alice walked two
miles to ask so simple a question when there was a telephone in
the house. Obviously Miss Perry also comprehended why Alice
thought it important to know what Mildred meant to wear. Adams
understood why Alice should be concerned with what she herself
wore "to look neat and tidy and at her best, why, of course she'd
want to," he thought--but he realized that it was forever beyond
him to understand why the clothing of other people had long since
become an absorbing part of her life.

Her excursion this morning was no novelty; she was continually
going to see what Mildred meant to wear, or what some other girl
meant to wear; and when Alice came home from wherever other girls
or women had been gathered, she always hurried to her mother with
earnest descriptions of the clothing she had seen. At such
times, if Adams was present, he might recognize "organdie," or
"taffeta," or "chiffon," as words defining certain textiles, but
the rest was too technical for him, and he was like a dismal boy