Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/28

18 It was because Mrs. Dallas adhered to models so scrupulously that Laurel's clothes were never cheap or flashy in appearance. Mrs. Dallas was like certain dressmakers, who know how to impart elegance and refinement to the clothes they make for others, while their own costumes are often extreme and unpleasantly conspicuous. Mrs. Dallas wore a good deal of imitation jewelry herself—large imitation pearls around her neck, large imitation pearls in her ears. But Laurel never wore jewelry at all, except a string of tiny gold beads.

The little Holland girl never wore jewelry at all, except a string of tiny gold beads. The little Holland girl was one of Mrs. Dallas's models. In Milhampton the Henry Hollands were one of "the four hundred"—one of the first ten of "the four hundred," in Mrs. Dallas's opinion. Laurel did not attend the same dancing-class which Stephanie Holland attended, but Mrs. Dallas often attended it, looking down from her balcony seat (to occupy which no ticket of admission was required) onto the polished floor below, studying, scrutinizing, and recording in as thorough and business-like a way as a dressmaker at a fashion-show in New York.

Mrs. Dallas and Laurel sat down at their table in the big hotel dining-room an hour later, Laurel was all ready for her long journey to New York, and Mrs. Dallas all ready for her shorter one to Boston, where at the appointed meeting-place in the South Station she was to pass Laurel over as usual to the spectacled Miss Simpson.