Page:The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man.djvu/39

Rh face brightened. She had resolved, as a last resort, to invest in the riband a certain precious quarter of a dollar which Harry had given her ages and ages ago, and which she had ever since worn as a locket. She left her sister abruptly; and, as she slid the coin from the riband, "Dear little locket," said she, "I suppose you will seem to other folks just like any other quarter, and they will just pass you from hand to hand without thinking at all about you—how foolish I am!"—she dashed a tear from her eye—"Sha'n't I love Harry just as well, and won't he love me just as well, and sha'n't I think of him more than ever now he has been so kind to Lottie, without having this to put me in mind of him?" This point settled to her own satisfaction, she turned as usual to the bright side. "How lucky Mr. Turner is selling off—I wonder what colour I had best get—Charlotte would like brown, it's so durable—but she looks so pretty in pink. It takes off her pale look, and casts such a rosy shadow on her cheek. But I am afraid she will think pink too gay for her." Thus weighing utility and sobriety against taste and becomingness, Susan entered the shop, and walking up to the counter, espied in a glass case a pink and brown plaid riband. Her own taste was gratified, and Charlotte's economy and preference of modest colours would be satisfied—in short, it was (all women will understand me) just the thing. She was satisfied, delighted, and, had not the master of the shop kept her waiting five minutes, she would have forgotten the inestimable value of that "quarter," that in addition to the ninepence must be paid. But in five minutes