"How much would it be, to make the dress plain?" I asked.
"_That_ would be plain," the mantua-maker answered quickly. "The style is, to trim everything very much. Oh, that would be quite plain, with the velvet."
"But without any trimming at all?" I asked. "How much would that be?" I felt an odd sort of shame at pressing the question; yet I knew I must.
"Without trimming!" said the woman. "Oh, you could not have it _without trimming;_ there is nothing made without trimming; it would have no appearance at all. People would think you had come out of the country. No young ladies have their dresses made without trimming this winter."
"Mrs. Sandford," said I, "I should like to know what the dress would be without trimming."
"What would it be, Melinda?" The woman was only a forewoman of her establishment.
"Oh, well, Mrs. Sandford, the naked dress I have no doubt could be made for you for five dollars."
"You would not have it _so_, Daisy, my dear?" said Mrs. Sandford.
But I said I would have it so. It cost me a little difficulty, and a little shrinking, I remember, to choose this and to hold to it in the face of the other two. It was the last battle of that campaign. I had my way; but I wondered privately to myself whether I was going to look very unlike the children of other ladies in my mother's position; and whether such severity over myself was really needed. I turned the question over again in my own room, and tried to find out why it troubled me. I could not quite tell. Yet I thought, as I was doing what I knew to be duty, I had no right to feel this trouble about it. The trouble wore off before a little thought of my poor friends at Magnolia. But the question came up again at dinner.
"Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "did you ever have anything to do with the Methodists?"
"No, ma'am," I said, wondering. "What are the Methodists?"
"I don't know, I am sure," she said, laughing; "only they are people who sing hymns a great deal, and teach that nobody ought to wear gay dresses."
"I can't say. I believe they hold that the Bible forbids ornamenting ourselves."
I wondered if it did; and determined I would look, And I thought the Methodists must be nice people.
"What is on the carpet now?" said the doctor. "Singing or dressing? You are attacking Daisy, I see, on some score."