Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/263

Rh "You are afraid of its not being becoming?" says Paul, looking puzzled. "Have you decided on what it is to be?"

"I have not thought much about it yet: anything."

"Wear white," he says, with a man's fixed belief in the perfectibility of that colourless colour. Black or white, or black and white—every man believes a woman to be well dressed when she is arrayed from top to toe in either, or both. Men have no notion of the innumerable little details that go to make up a perfectly appointed toilet. They will say that a woman looks well or ill, but they can't pick her to pieces, and tell you in what part of her dress the fault lies. They will pronounce one of Worth's choicest confections to be "hideous," and a simply but gracefully attired girl to be "charming;" having no feminine admiration—the barbarians!—for the costly lace and exquisite trimmings that mark the former, while the charming creature, poor soul! wears only ordinary muslin and ordinary silk.

"There are so many whites," I say, considering; "white silk, white satin, white brocade, white muslin—the materials are endless."

"And what had you on that day I met you among the rye?"

"A white cambric," I answer; adding mentally, "or a 'clean boiled rag,' as Jack calls it, and which the washerwoman knows as well as her own face!"

"If I tell you what to wear," says Mr. Vasher, "will you promise to have it?"

"So long as you do not put me in pink or yellow."

"Then you shall wear white of some glistening light fabric; and on one side you must have great bunches of gold wheat and scarlet poppies, with a little bunch of the same against your left shoulder, and with a wreath in your hair."

"Not in my hair, please, Mr. Vasher! It is not so very long ago that it was almost red, and"