“Ah, you see I don’t wear things—only a flannel jacket, to be a bit tidy,” Miss Muniment rejoined. “I go in only for smart counterpanes, as you can see for yourself;” and she spread her white hands complacently over her coverlet of brilliant patchwork. “Now doesn’t that look to you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?”
“Oh, my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!” Lady Aurora interposed, with visible anxiety.
“Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forget. This only cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a present. Yes, only sixpence, in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel, three years ago. A young man who works with my brother, and lives in that part, offered him a couple of tickets; and he took one, and I took one. When I say ‘I’, of course I mean that he took the two; for how should I find (by which I mean, of course, how should he find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and of course, as my bed is my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful counterpane, of every colour of the rainbow. Oh, there never was such luck as mine!” Rosy exclaimed, flashing her gay, strange eyes at Hyacinth, as if on purpose to irritate him with her contradictious optimism.
“It’s very lovely; but if you would like another, for a change, I’ve got a great many pieces,” Pinnie remarked, with a generosity which made the young man feel that she was acquitting herself finely.
Rose Muniment laid her little hand on the dressmaker’s arm, and responded, quickly, “No, not a change, not a change. How can there be a change when there’s already everything? There’s everything here—every colour that was ever seen, or composed, or dreamed of, since the world began.” And with her other hand she stroked, affectionately, her variegated quilt. “You have a great many pieces, but you haven’t as many as there are here; and the more you should patch them together the more the whole thing would resemble this dear, dazzling old friend. I have another idea, very, very charming, and perhaps her ladyship can guess what it is.” Rosy kept her fingers on Pinnie’s arm, and, smiling, turned her brilliant eyes from one of her female companions to the other, as if she wished to associate them as much as possible in their interest in her. “In connection with what we were talking about a few minutes ago—couldn’t your ladyship just go a little further, in the same line?” Then, as Lady Aurora looked troubled and embarrassed, blushing at being called upon to answer a conundrum, as it were, so publicly, her infirm friend came to her assistance. “It will surprise you at first, but it won’t when I have explained it: my idea is just simply a pink dressing-gown!”
“A pink dressing-gown!” Lady Aurora repeated.
“With a neat black trimming! Don’t you see the connection with what we were talking of before our good visitors came in?”
“That would be very pretty,” said Pinnie. “I have made them like that, in my time. Or blue, trimmed with white.”
“No, pink and black, pink and black—to suit my complexion. Perhaps you didn’t know I have a complexion; but there are very few things I haven’t got! Anything at all I should fancy, you were so good as to say. Well now, I fancy that! Your ladyship does see the connection by this time, doesn’t she?”
Lady Aurora looked distressed, as if she felt that she certainly ought to see it but was not sure that even yet it didn’t escape her, and as if, at the same time, she were struck with the fact that this sudden evocation might result in a strain on the little dressmaker’s resources. “A pink dressing-gown would certainly be very becoming, and Miss Pynsent would be very kind,” she said; while Hyacinth made the mental comment that it was a largeish order, as Pinnie would have, obviously, to furnish the materials as well as the labour. The amiable coolness with which the invalid laid her under contribution was, however, to his sense, quite in character, and he reflected that, after all, when you were stretched on your back like that you had the right to reach out your hands (it wasn’t far you could reach at best) and seize what you could get. Pinnie declared that she knew just the article Miss Muniment wanted, and that she would undertake to make a sweet thing of it; and Rosy went on to say that she must explain of what use such an article would be, but for this purpose there must be another guess. She would give it to Miss Pynsent and Hyacinth—as many times as they liked: What had she and Lady Aurora been talking about before they came in? She clasped her hands, and her eyes glittered with her eagerness, while she continued to turn them from Lady Aurora to the dressmaker. What would they imagine? What would they think natural, delightful, magnificent—if one could only end, at last, by making out the right place to put it? Hyacinth suggested, successively, a cage of Java sparrows, a music-box and a shower-bath—or perhaps even a full-length portrait of her ladyship; and Pinnie looked at him askance, in a frightened way, as if perchance he were joking too broadly. Rosy at last relieved their suspense and announced, “A sofa, just a sofa, now! What do you say to that? Do you suppose that’s an idea that could have come from any one but her ladyship? She must have all the credit of it; she came out with it in the course of conversation. I believe we were talking of the peculiar feeling that comes just under the shoulder-blades if one never has a change. She mentioned it as she might have mentioned a plaster, or another spoonful of that American stuff. We are thinking it over, and one of these days, if we give plenty of time to the question, we shall find the place, the very nicest and snuggest of all, and no other. I hope you see the connection with the pink dressing-gown,” she remarked to Pinnie, “and I hope you see the importance of the question, Shall anything go? I should like you to look round a bit, and tell me what you would answer if I were to say to you, Can anything go?”