Thus Mrs. Ashton yielded against her judgment; Mr. Ashton took out his snuff-box, to put it back like a culprit; and Miss Augusta sat down to the table, not knowing whether to be more pleased or sorry that she had got her own way.
To turn the subject, Mr. Ashton asked—
“What is that you put on the card-table, my dear?”
“Oh! I’ll show you,” and away the young lady was running, only to be recalled by her mother’s decided—
“After tea, Augusta.”
So after tea it was that Miss Augusta brought her treasure to her father—sundry sheets of paper, on which scraps of variously-coloured leather had been arranged and pasted in ornamental patterns, floral and geometrical, aided by the stamps employed in piercing brace-ends for the embroiderers, and in cutting stars to cover the umbrella-wheels inside.
“Who did those?” asked mother and father in a breath.
“Jabez Clegg, in the warehouse. Aren’t they pretty?” was Augusta’s ready reply, as she looked admiringly on her curious pictures.
“Oh! then that accounts for your being late, and in that condition at the tea-table,” said Mrs. Ashton, as she glanced from the rich designs before her to the sullied hands and pinafore.
“And so Jabez Clegg has been wasting our leather to make playthings for you?” remarked Mr. Ashton interrogatively, in a not unkindly tone of voice.