“Oh, we walk with Miss Oswald in the park, and she tells us stories, or we make them. We don’t tell stories in the country, unless we have to walk straight along the drives, that, as Papa says, we may have some solace.”
Then it was explained that Miss Oswald was their governess, and that they were very busy preparing for her birth-day. They were making a paper-case for her, all themselves, and this hour was their only time for doing it out of her sight in secret.
“But why do you make it yourselves?” said Kate; “one can buy such beauties at the bazaars.”
“Yes; but Mamma says a present one has taken pains to make, is worth a great deal more than what is only bought; for trouble goes for more than money.”
“But one can make nothing but nasty tumble-to-pieces things,” objected Kate.
“That depends,” said Lady Mary, in a very odd merry voice; and the other two, Adelaide and Grace, who were far too much alike for Kate to guess which was which, began in a rather offended manner to assure her that their paper-case was to be anything but tumble-to-pieces. Fanny was to bind it, and Papa had promised to paste its back and press it.
“And Mamma drove with me to Richmond, on purpose to get leaves to spatter,” added the other sister.
Then they showed Kate—whose eyes brightened at anything approaching to a mess—that they had a piece of coloured cardboard, on which leaves, chiefly fern, were pinned tightly down, and that the entire sheet was then covered with a spattering of ink from a tooth-brush drawn along the tooth of a comb. When the process was completed, the form of the loaf remained in the primitive colour of the card, thrown out by the cloud of ink-spots, and only requiring a tracing of its veins by a pen.
A space had been cleared for these operations on a side-table; and in spite of the newspaper, on which the appliances were laid, and even the comb and brush, there was no look of disarrangement or untidiness.
“Oh, do—do show me how you do it!” cried Kate, who had had nothing to do for months, with the dear delight of making a mess, except what she could contrive with her paints.