"How do you know that she bought remnants?" asked Elsie, in surprise.
"Oh, she always does; that's a particular hobby of the dear old body's; two or three times in a season she goes around to all the stores, and buys up the most of their stock; they save the best of them for her, and always know what she's after the moment she shows her pleasant face. She gives them away, generally, to the minister's wife, telling her the largest are to be made into dresses for her little girls; and the poor lady is often in great tribulation, not knowing how to get the dresses out of such small patterns, and afraid to put them to any other use, lest Miss Stanhope should feel hurt or offended. By the way, what do you think of Aunt Wealthy's own dress?"
"That it is very quaint and odd, but suits her as no other would."
"I'm so glad! It's just what we all think, but before you came we were much afraid you would use your influence to induce her to adopt a more fashionable attire."
Bear fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint.
"It's a very handsome present, child, very; and your old auntie will be reminded of you every time she uses it, or looks at it."
"Both beautiful and useful, like the giver," remarked Lottie.
"It" was a sewing-machine, Elsie's gift to Aunt Wealthy, forwarded from Cincinnati, by Mr. Dinsmore; the handsomest and the best to be found in the city; so Elsie had requested that it should be, and so he had written that it was.
"I am glad you like it, auntie, and you too, Lottie," was all she said in response to their praises, but her eyes sparkled with pleasure at the old lady's evident delight.
"It" had arrived half an hour before, on this the second morning after Mr. Dinsmore's departure, and now stood in front of one of the windows of Aunt Wealthy's bedroom--a delightfully shady, airy apartment on the ground floor, back of the parlor, and with window and door opening out upon a part of the lawn where the trees were thickest and a tiny fountain sent up its showers of spray.
Miss Stanhope stood at a table, cutting out shirts. Lottie was experimenting on the machine with a bit of muslin, and Elsie sat near by with her father's letter in her hand, her soft dark eyes now glancing over it for perhaps the twentieth time, now at the face of one or the other of her companions, as Lottie rattled on in her usual gay, flighty style, and Aunt Wealthy answered her sometimes with a straightforward sentence, and again with one so topsy-turvy that her listeners could not forbear a smile.