"What is that?" asked little Selina, curiously. Mrs. Brown had not noticed that the child was in the room.
"Now, Selina, was it you that told some of the girls at school that I could not get new frocks for Eliza? I was very vexed to hear about this to-day; and if ever you talk about home affairs at school again, I have asked your teacher to punish you. Now you can go out to play," she added. And the little girl, with drooping head, opened the back door and went into the garden.
"Miss Martin has been very kind indeed, but she does not wish it to be known, and so the girls must not go to school and chatter about it." And then she opened the parcel, and showed Eliza the soft, warm dress that would make her such a beautiful frock for the seaside.
"Oh, mother, it is too good for every day!" said the girl.
"Well now, I had a talk about that with Miss Martin, and she told me to tell you to let Nurse decide when you ought to wear a warm frock. You are not very strong, and the frock is to be worn when the days are chilly; so remember to ask Nurse to tell you when you had better wear it. And the next thing for us to do is to make it."
"Oh, mother, what a good thing it was we began to mend up Fanny's old things!" said Eliza, as she turned over her governess's discarded dress with a view to decide how much alteration would be required to make it fit her. And when tea was over the dress was tried on, and then the unpicking began, and everybody was busy doing something to make ready for Eliza's visit to the seaside.
Her father was putting new thick soles on her boots, and Jack new hinges to a small wooden box that would just hold her clothes, when the postman's sharp rat-tat at the door startled them, and he brought a parcel from Aunt Mary—"material to make Eliza a new best dress," she said, in the letter that came with it. "You will be sure to get her suitable cotton frocks," she wrote; "but the girl will want a new best dress, I am sure, and as I sent Fanny one last year, it is Eliza's turn now."
"Well, I am afraid I shall not be able to make it for you before you go away," said her mother, with a sigh of relief, as she thought how all their fears had been dispelled and Eliza provided for. The cotton frocks would be bought the next day; but mother and daughter both decided that the best dress could not be made until the others were finished and everything else got ready. "I may not be able to make it before you go," said her mother; "but you could wear one of your new cotton frocks for the first Sunday, and I will let you have the best one for the Sunday after, for you will want to go to church."
"Yes; I dare say I shall have to take that dear little Master Eustace," said Eliza. "He looks such a darling, sitting in the Vicarage pew, that I shall like to have him sitting next to me at church."
"All right, my girl; there is nothing like being in love with your work, whatever it is," said her father. "But you need not expect the little chap is always going to behave like an angel; there will be squalls sometimes, I dare say, and you will have to be patient and gentle when you would like to scold and be angry. But you must just think of mother, and what a deal she has to put up with from one and the other of us here, and what a different home it would be if she got angry and lost her temper every time we vex her."