nnet?"

"No," said Jenny, "I think not. I think Miss Betsey Titcomb, good as
she is, injures the cause of goodness by making it outwardly
repulsive. I really think, if she would take some pains with her
dress, and spend upon her own wardrobe a little of the money she gives
away, that she might have influence in leading others to higher aims;
now all her influence is against it. Her _outre_ and repulsive
exterior arrays our natural and innocent feelings against goodness;
for surely it is natural and innocent to wish to look well, and I am
really afraid a great many of us are more afraid of being thought
ridiculous than of being wicked."

"And after all," said Pheasant, "you know Mr. St. Clair says, 'Dress
is one of the fine arts,' and if it is, why of course we ought to
cultivate it. Certainly, well-dressed men and women are more agreeable
objects than rude and unkempt ones. There must be somebody whose
mission it is to preside over the agreeable arts of life; and I
suppose it falls to 'us girls.' That's the way I comfort myself, at
all events. Then I must confess that I do like dress; I'm not
cultivated enough to be a painter or a poet, and I have all my
artistic nature, such as it is, in dress. I love harmonies of color,
exact shades and matches; I love to see a uniform idea carried all
through a woman's toilet,--her dress, her bonnet, her gloves, her
shoes, her pocket-handkerchief and cuffs, her very parasol, all in
correspondence."

"But, my dear," said Jenny, "anything of this kind must take a
fortune!"

"And if I had a fortune, I'm pretty sure I should spend a good deal of
it in this way," said Pheasant. "I can imagine such completeness of
toilet as I have never seen. How I would like the means to show what I
could do! My life, now, is perpetual disquiet. I always feel shabby.
My things must all be bought at haphazard, as they can be got out of
my poor little allowance,--and things are getting so horridly dear!
Only think of it, girls! gloves at two and a quarter! and boots at
seven, eight, and ten dollars! and then, as you say, the fashions
changing so! Why, I bought a sack last fall and gave forty dollars for
it, and this winter I'm wearing it, to be sure, but it has no style at
all,--looks quite antiquated!"

"Now I say," said Jenny, "that you are really morbid on the subject of
dress; you are fastidious and particular and exacting in your ideas in
a way that really ought to be put down. There is not a gi