only too well.

"Couldn't I have a guimpe with it?" she suggested hopefully; "if I had
a guimpe, it would look different."

It would indeed!

"A guimpe!" echoed both Elinor and Miss Rosa.

Arethusa nodded, and turned once more to the mirror, "It's the sleeves
she wouldn't like," she lifted one to show its lack as a sleeve from
Miss Eliza's point of view, "and the neck, besides. It's ever so much
lower than my white dress, I always used to wear guimpes with dresses
like this. I don't mean just like this," added hastily, for a blunder
had been committed, "but when it had sleeves as short, and didn't come
up any higher."

"I never heard of such a thing," declared Elinor. "And, Arethusa, I
can't believe that even Miss Eliza would make you wear a guimpe with an
evening dress!"

But then Elinor did not know Miss Eliza.

And, "Anything on earth that you would do to that dress, Mrs.
Worthington, would spoil it," said Miss Rosa, warmly. "It's absolutely
perfect just as it is. And I'm almost sure, Miss Arethusa, that your
aunt would say so herself if she could see it."

But neither did Miss Rosa know Miss Eliza.

And Arethusa did.

She stepped slowly down from the little platform where she had been
standing for the better view all around, and her grey eyes filled
rapidly with the bitter tears of disappointment. It was Tragedy to give
it up! But if there was to be no guimpe....

Her fumbling fingers were reaching under the flowers at the girdle for
the hooks which had fastened her into it, when Elinor stopped her.

Elinor had set her heart on Arethusa having that Green Dress from the
first moment of seeing her in it. It seemed to Elinor to suit the girl
as if, as Miss Rosa had enthusiastically declared, somebody had sat
down before her and studied her "style". Her namesake nymph might have
worn the gown just as it was without a single change to make it more
airy or more like captured sea-foam in its fluttering draperies. It
belonged with Arethusa's hair and her greenish eyes. She would never
find another frock, if they looked all day, which would be half so
becoming. But there was no slightest use in buying it if this bugbear
of Miss Eliza's disapproval would continue to rear its serpent head to
Arethusa's further unhappiness.

"Arethusa," she demanded, "don't you think I know every bit as much
about clothes as Miss Eliza?"

Arethusa could but smile through the tears she was winking back at the
utter ridiculous