as she said to one
of the fall and winter months, who came in late, and noticed Clementina's
absence with a "Hello! Anything the matter with the Spirit of Summer?"
Clementina had become both a pet and a joke with these months before the
parade was over, and now they clamored together, and said they must have
her at the dance anyway. They were more tepidly seconded by the spring
and summer months, and Mrs. Milray said, "Well, then, you'll have to all
subscribe and get her a pair of dancing slippers." They pressed her for
her meaning, and she had to explain the fact of Clementina's destitution,
which that additional fold of cheese-cloth had hidden so well in the
coaching tableau that it had never been suspected. The young men
entreated her to let them each buy a pair of slippers for the Spirit of
Summer, which she should wear in turn for the dance that she must give
each of them; and this made Mrs. Milray declare that, no, the child
should not come to the dance at all, and that she was not going to have
her spoiled. But, before the party broke up, she promised that she would
see what could be done, and she put it very prettily to the child the
next day, and waited for her to say, as she knew she must, that she could
not go, and why. They agreed that the cheese-cloth draperies of the
Spirit of Summer were surpassingly fit for the dance; but they had to
agree that this still left the question of slippers untouched. It
remained even more hopeless when Clementina tried on all of Mrs. Milray's
festive shoes, and none of her razorpoints and high heels would avail.
She went away disappointed, but not yet disheartened; youth does not so
easily renounce a pleasure pressed to the lips; and Clementina had it in
her head to ask some of the table girls to help her out. She meant to try
first with that big girl who had helped her put on the shoeman's bronze
slippers; and she hurried through the office, pushing purblindly past
Fane without looking his way, when he called to her in the deference
which he now always used with her, "Here's a package here for you,
Clementina--Miss Claxon," and he gave her an oblong parcel, addressed in
a hand strange to her. "Who is it from?" she asked, innocently, and Fane
replied with the same ingenuousness: "I'm sure I don't know." Afterwards
he thought of having retorted, "I haven't opened it," but still without
being certain that he would have had the courage to say it.

Clementina did not think of ope