How good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh! She felt like lying back in the cushioned chair and reveling for a while in the luxury of it.She did for a little while.Then she replaced her shoes, rolled the cotton stockings together and thrust them into her bag.After doing this she crossed straight over to the shoe department and took her seat to be fitted.
She was fastidious.The clerk could not make her out; he could not reconcile her shoes with her stockings, and she was not too easily pleased.She held back her skirts and turned her feet one way and her head another way as she glanced down at the polished, pointed-tipped boots.Her foot and ankle looked very pretty.She could not realize that they belonged to her and were a part of herself.She wanted an excellent and stylish fit, she told the young fellow who served her, and she did not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price so long as she got what she desired.
It was a long time since Mrs.Sommers had been fitted with gloves.On rare occasions when she had bought a pair they were always "bargains," so cheap that it would have been preposterous and unreasonable to have expected them to be fitted to the hand.
Now she rested her elbow on the cushion of the glove counter, and a pretty, pleasant young creature, delicate and deft of touch, drew a long- wristed "kid" over Mrs.Sommers's hand.She smoothed it down over the wrist and buttoned it neatly, and both lost themselves for a second or two in admiring contemplation of the little symmetrical gloved hand.Butthere were other places where money might be spent.
There were books and magazines piled up in the window of a stall a few paces down the street.Mrs.Sommers bought two high-priced magazines such as she had been accustomed to read in the days when she had been accustomed to other pleasant things.She carried them without wrapping.As well as she could she lifted her skirts at the crossings.Her stockings and boots and well fitting gloves had worked marvels in her bearing--had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude.