here.

"We've just got an order for a ready-made ball-dress for a lady that
is unexpectedly going to the Charity Ball to-night," said Mrs.
McGuffin, head of the department. "The message says the lady is just
your height and build and color--she noticed you sometime, it
seems--and that we are to fit one of the dresses to you, making such
alterations as would make it fit you, choosing one suitable to your
complexion. When it's done, to save time, you are to go right to the
person who ordered it, without stopping to change your clothes. You
can do that there. It will make her late to the ball, at best. A
carriage and a person to conduct you will be waiting."

It was a magnificent dress that was gradually built upon the figure of
Clarissa, and when at last it was completed and she stood before the
great pier glass flushed with the radiance of a pleasure she could not
but feel despite her late sorrow and the fact she was but the lay
figure for a more fortunate woman, one would have to search far to
find a more beautiful creature.

"Whyee!" exclaimed Mrs. McGuffin. "Why, I had no idea you had such a
figure. Why, I must have you in my department to show off dresses on.
You will work at the cutlery counter not a day after to-morrow. But
there, I am keeping you. The ball must almost have begun. Here's a bag
with your things in it. I was going to say, 'your other things.'" And
throwing a splendid cloak about the lovely shoulders of Miss Clarissa,
Mrs. McGuffin turned her over to the messenger.

There was already somebody in the carriage into which Clarissa
stepped, but as the curtain was drawn across the opposite window, she
was unable to even conjecture the sex of the individual who was to be
her conductor to her destination, and steeped in dreams which from
pleasant ones quickly passed to bitter, she speedily forgot all about
the person at her side. But presently she perceived their carriage had
come into the midst of a squadron of other carriages charging down
upon a brilliantly lighted entrance where men and women, brave in
evening dress, were moving in.

"Why, we are going to the ball-room itself," and as she said this and
realized that here on the very threshold of the entrancing gayeties
she was to put off her fine plumage and see the other woman pass out
of the dressing-room into the delights beyond, while she crept away in
her own simple garb amid the questioning, amused, and contemptuous
stares of the haughty dame