“I can’t do that, Mary,” he said. “I’ve got enough to answer for as it is.”
She stirred impatiently. Could it be—no it must be some flowering bush along the roadside—she couldn’t be wearing perfume.
“It’s perfectly all right, David,” she said. “If it’s the dress you’re thinking of anyway. I just knew you’d be like this,” she said reproachfully. “So I borrowed one of Father’s Mrs. White books. Do you know what she said?”
“Sure.” David’s reply was light, almost bantering. He wanted to hit a note mixed of tolerance, wry humor, and the very gentlest confession of the very gentlest feeling of surprise. “Mrs. White said our sisters should clothe themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety. I don’t think she’d object,” he said, forcing himself into a lie that did not deceive
