“I don’t manage very well—I often buy bunns also; but when I wish for pretty things which cost much, I remember that Nurse says ‘I should turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity,’ and then I try not to look at them, but very often I do. You know the other day when I saw that beautiful basket I did not turn away. I looked at it so long, and then I took it in my hand and turned it round and round, and thought it so beautiful, that I could not resist buying it. And now I don’t like it at all; for it cost so much that I shall not be able to save any of my pocket-money this week.”
“Well, that was wrong, to be sure, and just what I should have done myself; but don’t be melancholy about it now, for you have always money beforehand, so it does not much signify for one week; so do tell me how I am to earn half-a-crown, and how I am to dry flowers in a most beautiful manner; you say patience is the chief thing. Will patience make them keep their colour? now do tell me that.”
“Yes,” Leila answered, “it will; and I will tell you how. Very often when it clears up after rain, and the flowers look very bright, you wish to gather them for drying—I always tell you that it is a bad time, but still you often try to do it—and they get quite dim and discoloured, and you are obliged to throw them away. Now when I wish to dry them, I wait till it has been quite fair for several days, and when it is bright and sunny, and there is no damp in the air, I gather the flowers. I always choose those that are very bright and fully blown, but before they have begun to fade in the slightest degree. If they have a decayed speck no bigger than the head of a pin, do not gather them, for they will not be bright when dried.”
“And what more do you do?”
“I put them between folds of close smooth writing-paper, never into blotting-paper.”
“But Lydia told me it should be blotting-paper.”
“No, I have tried that; but the blotting-paper seems to suck the colour out of them. Well, I place those papers between the leaves of a book, and tie it tight up with a ribbon, and put it under a weight; if it is a very tender flower, such as the blue convolvulus, for instance, then you must not put a very heavy weight, the weight must be in proportion to the tenderness of the flower. Next day I change the papers that there may be no damp about them, for nothing spoils their colour so much as damp. Now all this, you see, takes patience; for sometimes I have to change the papers more than once.”
“Yes,” Matilda observed, “and such patience, that I am sure I shall never be able to do it. And this is all then?”
“No; in putting the flowers into dry bits of paper you must do it very gently, that they may lie quite smooth; for much of their beauty depends on their looking smooth, and not shrivelled up in any way; and I forgot to tell you that sometimes before putting them in at all, I bend the stalks a little to make them lie gracefully. The stalks of the geraniums are so stiff and straight, that I am obliged to take off the flower-heads, and put them in papers by themselves, and then I flatten the stalks and bend them a little before I begin to dry them. The ferns, which you like so much, grow so gracefully, that I seldom have to bend them at all, but just to lay them on paper as they grow. The young ferns of a bright tender green do best: indeed, all green leaves should be dried when they first come out, before they have got to be a deep colour, for green is a very difficult colour to dry well; most yellow flowers do very well, the yellow crocus keeps very bright; indeed, some scarlet and rose-coloured geraniums dry beautifully, and other scarlets won’t dry at all,—you must just get acquainted with those that do well, and with those that don’t.”
Matilda groaned. “My hopes are quite dying away; half-a-crown!—I don’t think I shall be able to earn sixpence even;—but it is sunny and bright now, we might go into the garden, and you could gather some of the flowers which do best, and show me how you lay them on the paper—I think I have seen you working away with a long pin; but if I were to take a pin in my hand, I should be sure to run it through the flowers if they would not lie the right way, for I should be so provoked.