A MODERN CINDERELLA

“Let’s take a cab to the station. The roads are awfully wet still, and I’ll ruin my shoes,” suggested Alma. The little family were at breakfast, Nancy and Alma hastily swallowing their coffee so that they could hurry off to the station. After the fit of autumn wind and rain, another summer day had come, with a glistening sunlight which was doing its best to cheer up the drooping flowers in the tiny garden.

“We don’t need a cab. What are you talking about?” replied Nancy, glancing out of the window. “It’s a wonderful day, and we don’t have to make for all the puddles on the way to the station like ducks. By the way, don’t let me forget to stop at the bank. I dare say I ought to take some money with me in case we can’t get just what we want at Frelinghuysen’s. How much do you think we should have, Mother?”

“Seventy-five dollars ought to be enough,” said Mrs. Prescott vaguely, after a moment’s calculation. Nancy whooped.

“Seventy-five! Good gracious why, if I spend a cent over forty, we’ll have to live on bread and water for the rest of the month!”

“Well, just as you think, dear you know best, of course,” Mrs. Prescott answered absently. “You two had better be starting. I wish you would get Alma a new hat while you’re in town, Nancy. I don’t quite like that one she has it doesn’t go with her suit.”

Nancy pushed her chair back from the table.

“I’ll trot out and see Hannah a moment. We have about thirty-five minutes, Alma.”

It took them twenty minutes to walk to the station. Alma was in high spirits, Nancy still thoughtful. But the wind was up and out, tossing the trees, rippling the puddles, which reflected a clear, sparkling sky, and the riotous, care-free mood of the morning was infectious.

As the train sped through the open country, passing stretches of yellowing fields, clusters of woodland and busy little villages, Alma chattered joyously:

“Aren’t you awfully glad about the party, Nancy? Don’t you think we can go to a matinee it’s such a deliciously idle, luxurious sort of thing to do! I’m going to have chicken patties for luncheon, and lots of that scrumptious chocolate icecream that’s almost black. Don’t you love restaurant food, Nancy? It’s such fun to sit and watch the people, and wonder what they are going to do after luncheon, and what they are saying to each other, and where they live. When I’m married I shall certainly live in town, and I’ll have a box at the opera, and I’ll carry a pair of those eye-glasses on jewelled sticks what-do-you-call-’ems and every morning I’ll go down-town in my car and shop, and then I’ll meet my husband for luncheon at Sherry’s or the Plaza.”

“Of course you’ll have a country-place on Long Island,” suggested Nancy, with good-natured irony, which Alma took quite seriously.

“Oh, yes. With terraces and Italian gardens. I would love to be seen standing in a beautiful garden, with broad marble steps, and rows of poplar trees, and a sun-dial ”

“For whose benefit?”

“Oh, my own.”

“We’re feeling rich to-day, aren’t we?”

“Well, I don’t know anything that feels better than to be going to buy a new dress. Shall we get the hat too, Nancy?”

“What do you think?”

Alma hesitated.

“Well, I suppose we’d better wait. It’s funny how when you start spending money at all you want to get everything under the sun. Of course, girls like Elise or Jane do get everything they want ”

“Exactly. And when you’re with them you feel that you must let go, too. And if you can’t afford it ” Nancy shrugged her shoulders, and Alma finished for her:

“It makes you miserable.”

“Or else,” said Nancy, with a curl of the lip, “or else, if you aren’t bothered with any too much pride, you’ll do what that Margot Cunningham does. She simply camps on the Porterbridges. Elise is so good-natured that she lets Margot buy everything she likes and charge it to her, and Margot finds life so comfy there that she can’t tear herself away. I’d rather work my fingers to the bone than take so much as a pair of gloves given to me out of good-natured charity!” Nancy’s eyes sparkled. Alma was silent. There were times when Nancy’s fierce, stubborn pride frightened her sometimes the way her sister’s lips folded together, and her small, cleft chin was lifted, made her fancy that there might be a resemblance between Nancy and old Mr. Prescott. Alma was the butterfly, and Nancy the bee; the butterfly no doubt wonders why the bee so busily stores away the honey won by thrift and industry, and, in all probability, the bee reads many a lesson to the gay-winged idler who clings to the sunny flower. But to-day the bee relented.

“Now, ma’am, consider yourself the owner of unlimited wealth,” said Nancy, as they swung briskly into the concourse of the Grand Central Station. “You’re a regular Cinderella, and I’m your godmother, who is going to perform the stupendously brilliant, mystifying act of turning twenty rolls of sitting-room wall-paper, and three coats of brown paint into five yards of superb silk, two silver slippers, two silk stockings, and three yards of silver ribbon; or, one simple country maiden into a fashionable miss of entrancing beauty.”

“Nancy, you’re the most angelic person!” squealed Alma. “But aren’t you going to get yourself something, too? It makes me feel awfully mean to get new things when you have to wear that dowdy old yellow thing.”

“Dowdy, indeed. It’s grand. ’Miss Nancy Prescott was charming in a simple gown of mousseline-de-soie, which hung in the straight lines now so much in vogue. Her only ornaments were a bouquet of rare flowers, contrasting exquisitely with the shade of her frock, a toilette of unusual chic. Miss Alma Prescott, Melbrook’s noted beauty, was superb in a lavish creation’ You’re going to be awfully lavish, and quite the belle of the ball.”

“You ought to have some new slippers, Nancy a pair of gold ones would absolutely make your dress.”

“My black ones are all right. I’ll put fresh bows on them,” said Nancy, firm as a Trojan outwardly, though within her resolution wavered. Dared she take another seven dollars? She began to feel reckless.

“Are you waited on, madam?” The smooth voice of a saleswoman roused her from her calculations.

“We want to see some blue taffeta not awfully expensive.”

“Step this way. We have something exquisite five dollars a yard.”

“Oh, haven’t you anything less than that?” stammered Nancy in dismay. Alma glanced at her reprovingly.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t sound as if you hadn’t a dollar to your name, or she’ll just right-about-face and walk off,” she whispered. “We’ll look at the expensive silk, and then work around to the cheaper explain that it’s more what we want, and so on.”

“Yes, and the cheaper silk will look so impossible after we’ve seen the other that we’ll be taking it,” returned Nancy. “I know their wiles.”

“Here is a beautiful material quite new,” lured the saleswoman. “A wonderful shade. It will be impossible to duplicate. See how it falls as softly and gracefully as satin, but with more body to it. The other is much stiffer.”

“How how much is it?” asked Nancy feebly.

“Five-ninety-eight. It’s special, of course. Later on the regular price will be six-fifty.”

“Isn’t it lovely?” breathed Alma, touching the gleaming stuff with careful fingers.

“Have have you anything for about three dollars a yard?” asked Nancy, wishing that Alma would do the haggling sometimes.

The saleswoman listlessly unrolled a yard or two from another bolt and held it up.

“Is it for yourself, madam? Or for the other young lady?”

“It’s for my sister. Let me hold this against your hair, Alma.”

“It’s not nearly so nice as the other, of course,” observed Alma, in a casual tone. “It’s awfully stiff, and the color’s sort of washed out. I really think ”

“Oh, of course, this paler shade is not nearly so effective at night,” agreed the saleswoman, pouncing keenly upon her prey. “See how beautifully this deeper color brings out the gold in the young lady’s hair. Would you like to take it to the mirror, miss?”

“Oh, don’t, Alma!” begged Nancy, in comical despair. “Of course there isn’t any comparison.” She felt herself weakening. “I I suppose this would really wear better too.”

“Of course it would,” said Alma, quickly. “That other stuff is so stiff it would split in no time.”

Five times five-ninety-eight thirty dollars. Nancy wrinkled her forehead, but she knew that she had succumbed even before she announced her surrender. The saleswoman, watching her, lynx-eyed, smiled. Alma preened herself in front of the long mirror, frankly admiring herself, with the soft, silken stuff draped around her shoulders.

“All right,” said Nancy. “Give me five yards.”

“Charged?” purred the saleswoman. But Nancy had no mind to have the gray ghost of her extravagance revisit her on the first of the month.

“No, no! I’ll pay for it, and take it with me.” She counted out her little roll of bills, trying not to notice the pitiable way in which her purse shrank in, like the cheeks of a hungry man.

“Is there nothing you would like for yourself, madam?” murmured the voice of the temptress. “Here is some ravishing charmeuse the true ashes-of-roses. With your dark hair and eyes ”

“Oh, no no, thanks.” Nancy clutched Alma, and turned her head away from the shimmering, pearl-tinted fabric. For all her stiff level-headedness, she was only human, and a girl with a healthy, ardent longing for beautiful finery; prudent she was, but prudence soon reaches its limits when the pressure of feminine vanity and exquisite luxury is brought to bear upon it. There was only one course of resistance. Nancy fled.

“Now, slippers.” Alma skipped along beside her, hugging her precious bundles, with shining eyes, and cheeks aglow. “I think I love slippers better than anything in the world. Nancy, you’re a perfect lamb.”

They tried on slippers. Certainly Alma’s tiny foot and slender ankle was a delightful object to contemplate as she turned it this way and that before the little mirror.

“If you had a little buckle, miss we have some very new rhinestone ornaments I’d like to show you one a butterfly set in a fan of silver lace. Just a moment.”

Before Nancy could stop her the saleswoman had gone.

“We won’t get the buckles, you dear old thing,” Alma said consolingly, bending the sole of her foot. “We’ll just look at them.”

Nancy smiled wryly.

“I’d like to get you everything in the shop I hate to be stingy with you, dear; it’s just this old thing,” and she held up the shabby purse.

“Isn’t that perfectly gorgeous?” shrieked Alma, as the saleswoman held a little jewelled dragon-fly, poised on a spray of silver lace, against her instep.

“Gorgeous,” echoed Nancy.

“It’s a very chic trimming of course we use it only on the handsomer slippers,” chanted the saleswoman. “Now, we could put that on for you in five minutes, and really the expense would be small, considering that nothing more would be needed as an ornament, and it would be the smartest thing to wear no trimming on the dress whatever.”

“How much would it be?” asked Alma. “I I can’t take it now, but later ”

“The buckles are five dollars, and with the lace fan it would come to seven. I would advise you the prices will go up in another month ”

“Well, Alma ” Nancy hesitated, made one last frantic grasp at her fleeting prudence and surrendered. “Fourteen dollars. All right. You can take the buckles as a Christmas present from me. I’ll pay for those, and we’ll be back for them after we’ve got some other things.”

“Nancy, you angel! You lamb! You duck! You angelic dumpling!” crowed Alma. “I never felt so absolutely luxurious in all my life.”

“I don’t imagine you ever did,” remarked Nancy; she was aghast at her own extravagance. She judged herself harshly as the victim of the failing which she had so long combatted in her mother and sister. Every atom of the prudence with which she had armed herself seemed to be melting away like wax before a furnace. She had already spent forty-four dollars, and there was still the silver ribbon to be bought, which would bring the sum up to forty-five at the very least. She had originally intended to buy one or two small items with which to freshen up her own dress for the dance, but she stubbornly put aside the idea.

“Nancy, darling, aren’t you going to get yourself some slippers?”

“No I don’t need them. The ones I have are quite good.”

“I feel so mean, Nancy. Do you think I’m horribly selfish?”

“Selfish! You aren’t the least bit selfish, dear. I can understand perfectly how you hate to go among all those rich girls without looking as well-dressed as any of them, when you’re a thousand times prettier than the nicest looking one of them. Besides, just this once ” She paused, realizing that it was not a case of “just this once” at all. Pretty, new clothes and pocket money would be the barest necessities when they should be at Miss Leland’s. Why didn’t her mother see the folly of sending them to a place where they would learn to want things, actually to need things, far beyond the reach of their little bank account, and where Alma, chumming with girls who had everything that feminine fancy could desire, would either be made miserable, or she tried to rout her own practical thoughts. Why was it that she was so unwilling to trust in rosy chance? Why was it always she who had to bring the wet blanket of harsh common sense to dampen her mother’s and sister’s debonair trust in a smiling Providence? Was she wrong after all? She considered the lilies of the field, but somehow she could not believe that their example was the wisest one for impecunious human beings to follow. Lilies could live on sun and dew, and they had nothing to do but wave in the wind.

“Oh, look, Nancy aren’t those feather fans exquisite ”

“Alma, don’t you dare to peep at another showcase in this store, or I’ll tie my handkerchief over your eyes and lead you out blindfolded like a horse out of a fire.”

“But do look at those darling little bottles of perfume. They’re straight from Paris. I can tell from those adorable boxes with the orange silk tassels. Wouldn’t you give anything on earth to have one? When I’m rich I’m going to have dozens of bottles those slender crystal ones with enamel tops; and they’ll stand in a row across the top of a Louis XVI dressing-table.” Nancy smiled at Alma’s ever-recurring phrase, “When I’m rich.” She wondered if her butterfly sister had formed any clear notions of how that beatific state was to be realized.

“Alma Prescott, there’s the door, and thank heaven for it. Have the goodness, ma’am, to go directly through it. The street is immediately beyond, and that is the safest place for us two little wanderers at present.”

Forty-five dollars for just one evening’s fun.

Gold slippers would have been just the thing to wear with her yellow dress; but well