thought, in parenthesis.)
"We'll show him!" I said, aloud. "He won't know you. Such a lot of
beautiful clothes as we can buy with all this money. Oh, dear Frau
Nirlanger, it's going to be slathers of fun! I feel as excited about it
as though it were a trousseau we were buying."

"So it is," she replied, a little shadow of sadness falling across
the brightness of her face. "I had no proper clothes when we were
married--but nothing! You know perhaps my story. In America, everyone
knows everything. It is wonderful. When I ran away to marry Konrad
Nirlanger I had only the dress which I wore; even that I borrowed from
one of the upper servants, on a pretext, so that no one should recognize
me. Ach Gott! I need not have worried. So! You see, it will be after all
a trousseau."

Why, oh, why should a woman with her graceful carriage and pretty
vivacity have been cursed with such an ill-assorted lot of features!
Especially when certain boorish young husbands have expressed an
admiration for pink-and-white effects in femininity.

"Never mind, Mr. Husband, I'll show yez!" I resolved as the elevator
left us at the floor where waxen ladies in shining glass cases smiled
amiably all the day.

There must be no violent pinks or blues. Brown was too old. She was not
young enough for black. Violet was too trying. And so the gowns began to
strew tables and chairs and racks, and still I shook my head, and Frau
Nirlanger looked despairing, and the be-puffed and real Irish-crocheted
saleswoman began to develop a baleful gleam about the eyes.

And then we found it! It was a case of love at first sight. The
unimaginative would have called it gray. The thoughtless would have
pronounced it pink. It was neither, and both; a soft, rosily-gray
mixture of the two, like the sky that one sometimes sees at winter
twilight, the pink of the sunset veiled by the gray of the snow clouds.
It was of a supple, shining cloth, simple in cut, graceful in lines.

"There! We've found it. Let's pray that it will not require too much
altering."

But when it had been slipped over her head we groaned at the inadequacy
of her old-fashioned stays. There followed a flying visit to the
department where hips were whisked out of sight in a jiffy, and where
lines miraculously took the place of curves. Then came the gown
once more, over the new stays this time. The effect was magical.
The Irish-crocheted saleswoman and I clasped hands and fell back in
attitudes of adm