VI
THE NEW SUIT
That winter Mademoiselle Dobouziez was to make her debut. The days passed in errands and purchases. Gina was ordering many expensive and rare gowns. Her mother, forced to chaperon and accompany her, felt the effects of an access of coquetry. She thought it proper to dress like a young girl, to wear light colors, to choose gowns and hats as nearly like her daughter's as she could obtain them. Pushing her love of artificial flowers and flashy ribbons to an extreme, she turned the modistes' shops topsy turvy, unrolling all the ribbons, upsetting all the reels of trimming, bathing in a sea of feathers, ribbons, marabou and ostrich plumes. Had Regina not been there to take the milliner aside as she left the shop and cancel some of the embellishments chosen by the good lady, her mother would have harbored upon her hats enough things to decorate the chief altar of the cathedral or to enrich a botanical and ornithological museum. It was not without a struggle that Gina, who was very sensitive to ridicule, succeeded in pruning away a few of the shrubs from the nursery that Madame Dobouziez proposed to offer to the admiration of the commercial aristocracy.
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