"What a perfectly beautiful bride you will be! Never have I seen a more wonderful dress! Where did you get the material ?" Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a visitor as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a time and not interrupt; but about six of those grown people told the Princess all at the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth was married to a merchant who had a store at Westchester and how he got the dress in New York, and gave it to Sally for her wedding present, or she never could have had it.
The Princess lifted it and set it down softly.

"Oh look!" she cried.
"Look! It will stand alone!" There it stood! Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into a little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow length and flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come.

It was a pale pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square, made up of a dim yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw, with a thread of black on each side of it, and all over, very wide apart, were little faint splashes of black as if they had been lightly painted on.

The skirt was so wide it almost filled the room.

Every inch of that dress was lined with soft, white silk.