Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1912 — About Angelina [ARTICLE]

About Angelina

The girl who arrived last at th» porch party sewing bee began ex plaining before she had even sa> down. "You needn’t try to act as If yot weren’t noticing that I have on a yeai before last's organdie gown,” she said “or that it is faded and the lace torn or that I have on my hat that I weai when L work in the garden, or that my white shoes need cleaning. 1 know perfectly well that you can’t ' help but observe these things.” “You do look kind of haphazard and poor-relation/,” admitted the girl in the green linen. “You’ve got loads of» clothes —have they burned up or have you given them to the heathen or what is it?” “Not the heathen, but a heathen,’ mournfully said the young woman in the faded attire. “I may appear calm, but in reality I am seething with indignation. It was all my stupidity. I might have known better! Didn’t I go to school three years witn Angelina and room with her part of the time and know her like a book? What was I thinking of?” “Will you kindly explain yourself?” -asked the rest of the girls. “Or are you incapable of such a ratJonal action?” T “When I asked Angelina to visit me on her way east I was awfully pleased at the idea of seeing her again,” said th§ £ ir l who had arrived last “There were lots of things going on and I knew I could give her a good time. She was pretty as a picture when she arrived, and so sweet that all the family fell in love with her .at once. Mother said she didn’t see why I hadn’t asked her before to come to see me and my brother arranged a theatre party on the spot. “Angelina ran into my room the next morning to ask if I had a negligee she could wear while she unpacked. She said to give her an old one, any old thing, but, of course, I handed over my pink accordion plaited one tuat’s next to my very best. You can’t expect company to wear the seventyfive cent dimity ones you buy at sales, Angelina said it was beautiful and that I had good taste and was a dear. “Well, she didn’t return it, butwore it to breakfast every morning and when she took naps and brushed her hair —and I wish you could see the remnants of it! I thought possibly she had none in spite of her big trunk, for her people didn’t have much money when she was at school. Anyway I was billing to contribute the negligee for old times’ sake. ‘‘The evening Tom was to take us to the theatre it was so wretchedly hot I got out two white dresses to decide which was the cooler. Angelina came in just then and exclaimed over them. She said they looked delicious and she hadn’t anything so appropriate herself —and looked so pouting and forlorn that before I knew it I heard myself telling her that she might wear one if she chose.

- “She said, ‘Really?’ just like a child and seemed so rejoiced that I felt sorry for her, though I did think’ she might have taken the swiss instead of leaving it for me and choosing the chiffon lawn with its hand-run tucks and dozens of yards of lace. Still if she was not used to such gowns maybe she thought that the simpler. She looked perfectly lovely in it. Of course, I had to give her the lace trimmed slip to go under it and the white shoes and little things. “She wore the white shoes next day to the golf course and ever after and used up aH my white cleaning stuff on them and borrowed my white silk stockings, incidentally wearing holes in all of them and leaving the white lisle for me. “She borrowed my best tailored suit the day it rained and she went to the west side to luncheon. She ruined my two automobile veils and, by the end St the two weeks she had worn all my extra white linen skirts, my lawn frocks and white silk gloves and everything else I had, including my best lingerie waists. “I can’t tell you how she did it, but somehow she gave me the impression that her own. wardrobe was so limited and shabby she was ashamed to appear among my friends in her own clothes. Then she seemed to take such a pathetic delight in the pretty things that whenever I grew rebellious I was ashamed of myself for begrudging her a little pleasure. Only she was awfully hard on my clothes. She didn’t seem to take even ordinary care of them. “The day she left I happened to go Into her room as she had started to put the trays into her trunk, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Neatly folded and with sachet bags tucked between the layers were the flimsiest, daintiest frocks, laces, gloves, lingerie, negligees, waists and other things that I ever saw. I hadn’t a thing in my own wardrobe to equal any of them.

“What did that girl do? Just looked at me in the eyes in her most appealing, childlike way, and said I had been a perfect dear to let her wear my things, because she was going right on from visiting me to a fashionable house party in the East, and had wanted all her clothes fresh when she got there, because it was the chance of her life to make an Impression cm a man who was to visit there! "And at the moment I hadn’t a gown that didn't have to go to the laundry or cleaner’s on her account! And Pm wearing these!” “Goodness!" said the other girls ■Talk about the meanest man cm earth —aba's worse.”—Chicago News.