The dress
that Mark had bought for Patty was the usual charting and
unsuitable offering of a man's spontaneous affection, being of
dark violet cloth with a wadded cape lined with satin. A little
brimmed hat of violet velvet tied under her chin with silk
ribbons completed the costume, and before the youthful bride and
groom had left the ancestral door Mrs. Wilson had hung her own
ermine victorine (the envy of all Edgewood) around Patty's neck
and put her ermine willow muff into her new daughter's hands;
thus she was as dazzling a personage, and as improperly dressed
for the journey, as she could well be.
Waitstill, in her plain linsey-woolsey, was entranced with
Patty's beauty and elegance, and the two girls had a few minutes
of sisterly talk, of interchange of radiant hopes and confidences
before Mark tore them apart, their cheeks wet with happy tears.
As the Mason house faded from view, Patty having waved her muff
until the last moment, turned in her seat and said:--
"Mark, dear, do you think your father would care if I spent the
twenty-dollar gold-piece he gave me, for Waitstill? She will be
married in a fortnight, and if my father does not give her the
few things she owns she will go to her husband more ill-provided
even than I was.
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