We said we saw it quite plainly.
“Then, you notice it says at the very end, ‘go back and repeat from the first row’? Now this is the extraordinary part of the affair; every time I go back and repeat from the first row it makes an entirely different scallop. The last time but one, you see, the scallop came on the opposite side of the sewing-on edge; I thought that was interesting enough! But now I find this last scallop has turned a corner. Funny, isn’t it?”
For the first time we gave Virginia’s bit of edging serious attention. What she had done with those directions it was impossible to say, but the result was certainly peculiar.
“That will be a valuable piece of lace by the time it’s finished,” I said. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m making it as a Christmas present for you,” she replied sweetly. “I think it may help to promote conversation if you display it at your social functions. I know you’re going to say how unselfish it is of me. I think, myself, I mellow as I age.”
“Not at all,” I replied politely, and suggested that we should go for a walk, lest such concentrated thinking should be too much for her.
“If you’d been a properly-minded hostess you would have proposed that long ago. I’ve been waiting anxiously for it, only there is Ursula absorbed in that outfit that no masculine infant anywhere would recognise——”
“Oh, I’ve given up the knicker idea long ago,” interrupted Ursula. “I’ve turned them into chest-protectors for the old people in the infirmary. And now, as a war economy, I’m going to enlarge your vests (I neither ask for, nor expect, gratitude!). The laundry having shrunk them to waistbands, I shall add an upper and a lower storey.”
“—and you sit hour after hour reading MSS. What are they all about? What’s that one in your hand, for instance?”
“This one,” holding up some sheets of violently-written paper that almost burst through the envelope, “is an anonymous letter from some irate lady who objects to something or someone appearing in our pages. I haven’t time to read it, but if you care to wade through it——”