Then she clasped him round the neck, and leaned her head upon his shoulder, and looked lovingly up in his face. “I know you would like your Rosa to look as well as Mrs. Vivian.”
“No one ever looks as well, in my eyes, as my Rosa. There, the dress will add nothing to your beauty; but go and get it, to please yourself; it is very considerate of you to have chosen something of which you have ten yards, already. See, dear, I'm to receive twenty pounds for this article; if research was paid it ought to be a hundred. I shall add it all to your allowance for dresses this year. So no debt, mind; but come to me for everything.”
The two ladies drove off to Madame Cie's, a pretty shop lined with dark velvet and lace draperies.
In the back room they were packing a lovely bridal dress, going off the following Saturday to New York.
“Oh, dear, yes!” exclaimed Madame Cie. “The American ladies are excellent customers. They buy everything of the best, and the most expensive.”
“I have brought a new customer,” said Miss Lucas; “and I want you to do a great favor, and that is to match a blue silk, and make her a pretty dress for the flower-show on the 13th.”
Madame Cie produced a white muslin polonaise, which she was just going to send home to the Princess -----, to be worn over mauve.
“Oh, how pretty and simple!” exclaimed Miss Lucas.
“I have some lace exactly like that,” said Mrs. Staines.
“Then why don't you have a polonaise? The lace is the only expensive part, the muslin is a mere nothing; and it is such a useful dress, it can be worn over any silk.”
It was agreed Madame Cie was to send for the blue silk and the lace, and the dresses were to be tried on on Thursday.
On Thursday, as Rosa went gayly into Madame Cie's back room to have the dresses tried on, Madame Cie said, “You have a beautiful lace shawl, but it wants arranging; in five minutes I could astonish you with what I could do to that shawl.”
The dressmaker kept her word. By the time the blue dress was tried on, Madame Cie had, with the aid of a few pins, plaits, and a bow of blue ribbon, transformed the half lace shawl into one of the smartest and distingue things imaginable; but when the bill came in at Christmas, for that five minutes' labor and distingue touch, she charged one pound eight.