Von Marlo came up to me and said, “It is a most wonderful and cleverly constructed inkstand. I tell you what—whenever I come over to your house I’ll see that it’s dusted and kept in order. I’ll look after it myself. I think it’s quite lovely.”
I had given Von Marlo a nice little tablet for notes, which he professed to be delighted with; and I had given my step-mother a new sort of diary with a lock and key. There was no one whom I had forgotten. Even Augusta was in raptures with the very driest book on mathematics that I could pick up. She said that for once she believed I was a thoroughly sensible girl.
Then there were the gifts from the others to me. My step-mother gave me a lovely little narrow gold chain with a locket attached to it; and father, for the first time since I could remember, gave me a present simply as a present. It consisted of a row of very curious, sweet-scented beads, which were mounted now in gold, and could be worn either as a necklace or as a bracelet.
“But you have had these for ages,” I said.
“Yes; but my wife thought that they could be set very prettily for you,” he said.
I was delighted, and thanked him heartily. I had often coveted those blue beads, for they were a wonderful greenish blue, and in some lights looked quite opalescent.
The boys, too, gave me things very suitable and very useful. No one had forgotten me. Even Augusta gave me a pin-cushion stuck full of pins that I scratched myself with the first thing. That was very likely, for she had put them in so badly that several stuck out underneath, and I had inflicted a wound before I was aware of this fact.
But the presents, after all, were nothing compared to the festive air which pervaded the place.
We went to church, and we knelt before God’s altar, and joined in the great and glorious Festival of Divine Love.
After church we were all to go to the Aldyces’ for dinner. This invitation had been vouchsafed to us on the occasion of my father’s marriage, and Mrs Grant said that it was quite impossible not to accept it.