"Is this yours?" she asked, of Miss Mingle.

"Yes, yes, my dear!" cried Miss Mingle, gratefully accepting the purse, "I'm so thankful! I caught her hand as she slipped the purse away from my arm. How can I thank you, Miss Dale?"

Tavia led the way out of the crowd, and the store detective took charge of the woman, who was an old offender and well known.

"Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers!" joyfully exclaimed Miss Mingle, when the excitement was over. "Where did you come from, and at such an opportune moment?"

"We are as surprised as you," exclaimed Dorothy, "and so glad to have been able to be of a.s.sistance!"

"We'll hang the saucepan in the main hall at Glenwood in honor of the bargain rush," said Tavia, waving the parcel above her head.

"Girls, I'm still picking feathers out of my hair!" said Miss Mingle, laughing gaily.

"Don't you love New York?" burst from Tavia's lips. "I'm dreading the very thought of returning to Glenwood and school again!"

But Miss Mingle sighed. "I'm counting the days until my return to Glenwood, my dears. But, you don't want to hear anything about that, you're young and happy, and without care. Come and see us-I'm with my sister, and I would just love to have you." At mention of her sister, Miss Mingle's lips involuntarily quivered and she partly turned away. "Do come, girls, this is my address. I'm glad you're enjoying New York; I wish I could say as much."

As she said good-bye, Dorothy noticed how much more than ever the thin, haggard face was drawn and lined with anxiety, and the timid dread in her eyes enhanced by the bright red spots that burned in the hollows of her cheeks.

"We must call," said Dorothy, when Miss Mingle had disappeared. "There is some secret burden wearing that little woman to a shred."

"Her eyes have the look of a haunted creature," said Tavia, seriously.

"We can't call to-morrow; we have the matinee, you know."

"Yes, that's always the way, one must do the pleasant things, and let misery and sorrow take care of themselves," sighed Dorothy. "Well, we can the following day."

CHAPTER XIV THE DRESS PARADE

"Oh dear," sighed Dorothy, falling limply into a handsomely upholstered rocker in the comfortable resting-room of the shop, half an hour after they had left Miss Mingle, "I'm completely exhausted!" She carried several parcels, which she dropped listlessly on a nearby couch, on which Tavia was resting.

"How mildly you express it!" cried Tavia, "I'm just simply dead! Don't the crowds and the lights and confusion tire one, though! I'll own up, that for just one wee moment to-day, I thought of Dalton, and its peaceful quiet and the blue sky and-those things, you know," she hastily ended, always afraid of being sentimental.

"I shouldn't want to think that all my days were destined to be spent in New York. It makes a lovely holiday place, but I like the country," said Dorothy, as she watched a young girl, shabbily dressed, eating some fruit from a bag.

Tavia watched her too. "At least, the monotony of the country can always be overcome by simple pleasures, but here there is no escape to the peaceful-the temptations are too many. For instance," Tavia jumped from her restful position, and sat before a writing table, and the shabby young girl who was eating an orange, stopped eating to stare at the schoolgirl. "Who wouldn't just write to one's worst enemy, if there was no one else, just to use these darling little desks!"

"And the paper is monogramed," exclaimed Dorothy, regaining an interest in things. "What stunning paper!" She, too, drew up a chair to the dainty mahogany table and grasping a pen said: "We simply must write to someone.

This is too alluring to pa.s.s by."

"Here goes one to Ned Ebony," and Tavia dipped the pen into the ink and wrote rapidly in a large scrawling hand.

"Mine will be to-Aunt Winnie," said Dorothy, laughing.

The shabby girl finished her orange, and picking up a small bundle, took one lingering look at the happy young girls at the writing desks and left the resting room.

"Aren't we the frivolous things," said Tavia, "writing the most perfect nonsense to our friends merely because we found a dainty writing table!"

"With the most generous supply of writing paper!" said Dorothy. "But the couches and chairs in this room are too tempting to keep me at the writing desk." Dorothy sealed her letter and again curled up in the s.p.a.cious rocking chair.

"And while we are resting, we can study art," exclaimed Tavia, gazing at the oil paintings and tapestry that adorned the walls.

A woman, with a grand a.s.sortment of large bundles and small children, tried to get them all into her arms at once, preparatory to leaving the resting room, but found it so difficult that she sat down once more and laughed good-naturedly, while the children scrambled about the place, loath to leave such comfortable quarters. Dorothy watched with interest, and wondered how any woman could ever venture out with so many small children clinging to her for protection, to do a day's shopping. Tavia was more interested in art at that moment.

"Why go to the art museums?" she asked, "we can do that part on our trip right here and now; we only lack catalogues."

"And we can do nicely without them," said Dorothy, dragging her wandering attention back to Tavia. "I can enjoy all these pictures without knowing who painted them. We can have just five minutes more in this palatial room, and then we simply must go on."

And five minutes after the hour, Dorothy persuaded Tavia to leave the ideal spot, and, entering the elevator, they were whirled upward to the dress parade.

Roped off from the velvet, carpeted sales floors, numerous statuesque girls paraded about, dressed in garments to charm the eye of all beholders-to lure the very short and stout person into purchasing a garment that looked divine on a willowy six-foot model; or, a wee bit of a lady into thinking that she can no longer exist, unless robed in a cloak of sable. But neither Dorothy nor Tavia cared much for the lure of the gorgeous garments, they were too awed at the moment to yearn for anything. A frail, ethereal creature, with a face of such delicacy and wistfulness, so dainty and graceful, with a little dimpled smile about her lips, pa.s.sed the country girls and after that the girls could see nothing else in the room. They sat down and just watched her. A trailing robe of black velvet seemed almost too heavy for her slender white shoulders, and a large hat with snow white plume curling over the rim of the hat and encircling her bare throat, like a serpent, framed her flushed face.

"There," breathed Tavia, "is the prettiest face I've ever dreamed of seeing."

"She's more than pretty, she has a soul," said Dorothy, reverently.

"There is something so wistful about her smile and the tired droop of her shoulders. I feel that I could love her!"

"She has put on an ermine wrap over the velvet gown," said Tavia.

Shrinking behind Dorothy she said impulsively: "Dare we speak to her? It must be the most wonderful thing in the world to have a face like that!

And to spend all her days just wearing beautiful gowns!"

"She wears them so differently from the others here," declared Dorothy.

"She's strikingly cool, so far beyond her immediate surroundings."

"I think she must be a princess," said Tavia, in a solemn voice, "no one else could look like that and stroll about with such an air!"

"I think she is someone who has been wealthy and is now very poor," said Dorothy, tenderly. "How she must detest being stared at all day long!

This work, no doubt, is all she is fitted for, having been reared to do nothing but wear clothes charmingly."

"She's changing her hat now," said Tavia, watching the model as she was arrayed in a different hat. "We might just walk past and smile. I shall always feel unsatisfied if we cannot hear her voice."

Together they timidly stepped near the wistful-eyed girl with the flushed face.

"You must grow so very tired," said Dorothy, sympathetically.

A cool stare was the only reply.

"Hurry with the boa, you poky thing," came from the red, pouting lips of the wistful-eyed girl, ignoring Dorothy and Tavia as though they were part of the building's masonry. "I ain't got all day to wait! Gotta show ten more hats before closing. Hurry up there, you girls, you make me mad!

Now you hurry, or I'll report you!" and turning gracefully, she tilted her chin to just the right angle, the shrinking, wistful smile appeared on her lips, the tired droop slipped to her shoulders, all the air of charm covered her like a mantle, and again she started down the strip of carpet, leaving behind her two sadly disillusioned young girls.

"Let us go right straight home," said Dorothy. "One never knows what to believe is real in this hub-bub place."

"We might have forgiven her anything," said Tavia, "if she had been wistfully angry, or charmingly bossy; but to think that ethereal creature could turn into just a plain, everyday mortal!"

"The flowers were mostly artificial, the bargain counters mere stopping places for pickpockets, and the most beautiful girl was rude!" cried Dorothy.