A new kind of despair came into her lovely eyes, a plaintive
note into her voice. (I may be pardoned for declaring that she became,
in the twinkling of an eye, a real flesh and blood woman.) "I don't
know what I shall do unless I can get something to wear, Mr. Barnes. I
haven't a thing, you see. This suit is--well, you can see what it is.
I--"
"I've never seen a more attractive suit," he pronounced. "I said as
much to myself the first time I saw it, the other evening at the
cross-roads. It fits--"
"But I cannot LIVE in it, you know. My boxes are up at Green Fancy,--
two small ones for steamer use. Everything I have in the world is in
them. Pray do not look so forlorn. You really couldn't have carried
them, Mr. Barnes, and I shudder when I think of what would have
happened to you if I had tumbled them out of the window upon your
head. You would have been squashed, and it isn't unlikely that you
would have aroused every one in the house with your groans and
curses."
"I dropped a trunk on my toes one time," he said, grinning with a
delight that had nothing to do with the reminiscence. She was quaintly
humorous once more, and he was happy. "I think one swears more
prodigiously when a trunk falls on his toes than he does when it drops
on his head.
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