CHAPTER XI
A LOVE LETTER—AND A ROSE
A couple of days after Leslie's visit Gwenna was moving about the bedroom at Mrs. Crewe's cottage.
It was an old-fashioned, quaintly pretty room. The low ceiling, on which the lamplight gleamed, was crossed by two sturdy black oak beams. Straw-matting covered the uneven floor, and the wall-paper was sprinkled with a pattern of little prim posies in baskets. The chintz of the casement-curtains showed flowering sprays on which parrots perched; there was a patchwork quilt on the oaken bed.
Gwenna had come up early; it was only nine o'clock. So, having undressed and got into her soft white ruffled night-gown and her kimono of pink cotton-crêpe, she proceeded to indulge in one of those "bedroom potterings" so dear to girlhood's heart.
First there was a drawer to be tidied in the dressing-table that stood in the casement-window. Ribbons to be smoothed out and rolled up; white embroidered collars to be put in a separate heap. Next there was the frilling to be ripped out of the neck and sleeves of her grey linen dress, that she had just taken off, and to be rolled up in a little ball, and tossed into the wastepaper basket. Then, two Cash's marking-tapes with her name, Gwenna Dampier, to be sewn on to the couple of fine, Irish linen handkerchiefs that had been brought down to her as a little offering from Leslie. Then there was her calendar to be brought up to date; three leaves to tear off until she came to the day's quotation:
"Don't call the score at half-time."
Then there was the last button to sew on to a filmy camisole that she had found leisure, even with her work and her knitting, to make for herself. Gradually, young Mrs. Dampier meant to accumulate quite a lot of "pretties" for the Bottom Drawers, that Ideal which woman never utterly relinquishes. The house and furniture of married life Gwenna could let go without a sigh. "The nest"—pooh! But the ideal of "the plumage" was another matter. Even if the trousseau did have to come after the wedding, never mind! A trousseau she would have by the time Paul came home again.