"Will you think me rude if I ask to look at your work?"
"You may look at what I am going to send to the shop."
"Oh, what shop?"
She got out of her chair and moved to the table. There was no smile upon her baby-mouth. She pointed to the articles I had noticed but had not dared to examine. They were, indeed, sights to see, one and all. Such delicate frock-bodies and sprigged caps for infants; such toilet-cushions rich with patterns, like ingrained pearls; such rolls of lace, with running gossamer leaves, or edges fine as the pinked carnations in Davy's garden. There were also collars with broad white leaves and peeping buds, or wreathing embroidery like sea-weed, or blanched moss, or magnified snow, or whatever you can think of as most unlike work. Then there was a central basket, lined with white satin, in which lay six cambric handkerchiefs, with all the folded corners outwards, each corner of which shone as if dead-silvered with the exquisitely wrought crest and motto of an ancient coroneted family.
"Oh, I never did see anything like them!" was all I could get out, after peering into everything till the excelling whiteness pained my sight. "Do tell me where you send them?"
"I used to send them to Madame Varneckel's, in High Street; but she cheated me, and I send them now to the Quaker's, in Albemarle Square."
"You sell them, then?"
"Yes, of course; I should not work else. I do not love it."
"They ought to give you a hundred guineas for those."
"I have a hundred guineas already."