There was a double set of the tapers, and two
relays of devices in sweets, for the benefit of the party of the second
night, a list of whom Miss Hacket had brought, that heads might be
counted, and any deficiency supplied in time through Aunt Jane. For
Lady Merrifield had commissioned Gillian to lay in--unknown to the good
lady--a stock of such treasures as are valuable indeed to the little
maid: shell pin-cushions, Cinderella slippers holding thimbles, cases
of hair-pins, queer housewives, and the like things, wonderfully pretty
for the price, and which filled the kind heart of Miss Hacket with
rapture and gratitude at such brilliant additions to her own home-made
contrivances in the way of cuffs, comforters, and illuminated workbags,
all beautifully neat; I though it was hard to persuade her of what Lady
Merrifield averred, that such things ought to be far more precious than
brilliant, shop-bought, ready-made ware, 'with no love-seed in it.'
'It is very hard,' she said; 'how fancy shops try to spoil all one used
to be able to do for one's friends. The purses, and the penwipers, and
the needle-cases that were one's choicest presents in my youth, are all
turned out now smart and tight and fashioned, but without a scrap of
the honest old labour and love that went into them.'
'But papa and mamma do care still,' cried Gillian; 'papa never will
have any purse but the long ones mamma nets for him.'
'And mamma always will have the old brown and blue carriage-bag that
Aunt Phyllis worked,' chimed in Mysie, 'though Claude did say he would
throw it into the sea when we crossed from Dublin for it looked like an
old housekeeper's.
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