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.
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