The next step was to plan a reception to welcome her mother home and
exhibit the new covering. Then a mighty idea struck her--this was the
opportunity for the crimson velvet dress!

"I mayn't never have as good an excuse for it again," she said to the
sewing-girl, "and it's the one thing needed to make everything
complete. Me in that crimson and Ma in the fawn silk she had made when
the Reverend Mr. Ellis came will be a perfect match for the
furniture."

She patted the sofa back with affectionate pride.

"It does make you feel good to have anything new," she said, sighing
contentedly. "_Anything_, I don't care if it's only a kitchen
stove-lifter. But this!--There are an awful lot of things in the world
do make you feel good; aren't there, Miss Adams? I mean common things,
like putting on dry stockings when your feet are wet, or reading in
bed, or sitting in a shady spot on a hot summer's day, with a muslin
dress on--yes, or even eating your tea, if you happen to be feeling
hungry and have something particularly nice," added this cheerful
materialist.

The crimson velvet dress was being fitted for the last time when a
letter was handed to Mary Ann. Her spectacles were downstairs, so she
asked the sewing-girl to read it.

"'My dear aunt,'" Miss Adams began, "'Grandma took cold in church a
week ago last Sunday and has been laid up----'"

There was a quick rustling of the velvet train. Mary Ann was vanishing
into the clothes-closet. In a moment she reappeared with a small
valise in her hand, and Miss Adams saw in her face what no one had
ever seen there before--the shadow of a fear that hovered always on
the outer edge of her happy existence and now stood close by her side.
Mary Ann might be nine-tenths Maberly, but the other tenth was
Colquhoun, after all.

"Put a dress into it, please," she said, handing the valise to Miss
Adams. "No, I won't wait to take this off--I've a waterproof that will
cover it all up. Pin the train up with safety pins--never mind if it
does make pin-holes--I've just ten minutes to catch the train. _A week
ago Sunday!_ Oh, why didn't they let me know before?"

When she alighted from the train at the flag station, she was
clutching the waterproof close at the neck. She held it in the same
unconscious grasp when she entered Jane's big farm-house, by way of
the kitchen. Selina was there, making a linseed poultice, and the odor
was mingled with another which she knew afterwards to be the