“Is your ole man outside?”
“No; he has gone to his room.”
“Then it’s all right, and I can come out,” replied the woman, opening the door and standing there in her ascension robes, while she held up, at arm’s length, one of Elfrida’s own fine cambric nightdresses, and exclaimed:
“Look here, I say! I can’t get into this thing! Why, look at me and look at it! You might’s well try to squeeze a pumpkin into a pint pot, as me in it!”
Mrs. Force saw, and recognized the dilemma. The stout woman could not wear one of her night robes; and, if not one of hers, certainly not one of Miss Meeke’s, or of either the young girls’—all of which were smaller than her own. What was to be done now?
The lady stood confounded for a moment, and then a bright thought struck her.
“I will find one to fit you, and bring it,” she said.
“That’s you!” exclaimed the woman.
Elfrida Force turned away and went into her own room to get the wax taper which her husband had carried there, and then she went up into the garret and waked up old Aunt Lucy, who was even stouter than Mrs. Anglesea, and who had a treasure that was the pride of her heart—a small chest, full of fine, snow-white underclothing, that was laid up in lavender, and only taken out to be shown to acquaintances, but never worn.
When Luce was roused out of her sleep, to see her mistress standing over her, with a taper in her hand, she was frightened half out of her wits at—she knew not what, but she instinctively gasped out: