Wood's is as good a store as any
you could go to in New York," said Eunice. "Then there is the Boston
Store, too, and Collins & Green's. All of them are very good, and
they have a good assortment. Hardly anybody in Amity goes anywhere
else shopping, they think the Westbridge stores so much better."

"Of course it is cheaper to come here," said Maria, as they got off
the car in front of Adams & Wood's.

"That isn't the reason," said Eunice, eagerly. "Why, Mrs. Judge
Saunders buys 'most everything here; says she can do enough sight
better than she can anywhere else."

"If the dress Mrs. Saunders had on at the church supper was a sample,
she dresses like a perfect guy," said Maria, as they entered the
store, with its two pretentious show-windows filled with waxen ladies
dressed in the height of the fashion, standing in the midst of
symmetrically arranged handkerchiefs and rugs.

Maria knew that she was even cruelly pert to her aunt, but she felt
like stinging--like crowding some of the stings out of her own heart.
She asked herself was ever any girl so horribly placed as she was,
married, and not married; and now she had seen some one else whom she
must shun and try to hate, although she wished to love him. Maria
felt instinctively, remembering the old scenes over the garden fence,
and remembering how she herself had looked that very day as she
started out, with her puffy blue velvet turban rising above the soft
roll of her fair hair and her face blooming through a film of brown
lace, and also remembering George Ramsey's tone as he asked if he
might call, that if she were free that things might happen with her
as with other girls; that she and George Ramsey might love each
other, and become engaged; that she might save her school money for a
trousseau, and by-and-by be married to a man of whom she should be
very proud. The patches on George Ramsey's trousers became very dim
to her. She admired him from the depths of her heart.

"I guess we had better look at flannels first," Eunice said. "It
won't do to get all wool, aside from the expense, for with that
Ramsey woman's washing it wouldn't last any time."

She and her aunt made most of their purchases in Adams & Wood's. They
succeeded in obtaining quite a comfortable little outfit for Jessy
Ramsey, and at last boarded a car laden with packages. Eunice had a
fish-net bag filled to overflowing, but Maria, who, coming from the
vicinity of New York, looked down on bags,