Ruby was so impatient to use her new sealing-wax outfit that she found it very hard work to finish her letter carefully, and write the last words just as well as she had written the first one.
"Do you think 'Ruby' looks as well as 'My dear Mamma and Papa'?" she asked Aunt Emma, carrying the paper over to her.
That was Ruby's test whether she had been careful in writing a letter, to look and see whether the last words were as carefully written as the first ones. Sometimes, if she had not been very careful, one would not think that the same little girl had written all the letter. The first few lines would be so very neat and carefully written, and the last ones would be straggly, and of different heights and wandering all across the pages.
But this time Ruby had been very careful indeed. She had left just the same margin all the way down the left-hand side of her page, and she had been careful in dividing her words, so when Aunt Emma had looked it all over very carefully, she could say that it was just as nice as Ruby could possibly have written.
Then Ruby folded it and put it into one of her new envelopes; and then came the most exciting part of all. Ruby had never been very fond of letter-writing before, but she thought she would be perfectly willing to write a letter every day, if she might always seal them up with wax.
She put the little pond-lily candlestick out upon the table, on a folded piece of paper, which Aunt Emma told her she had better put under it lest the melted wax should drop upon the table-cloth, and then she took out her little box of colored tapers, and tried to decide which one she should use first.
She decided upon the pink one, because that matched the color of the paper she had been using; and so she took out a pink taper, and set it in the candlestick. It fitted very snugly, so there was no danger of its falling out.
Aunt Emma showed her how to open the little silver match-box that Ruby had not discovered before in the outfit, and she lighted the taper, and then held a stick of green sealing-wax in the flame.
When the end had grown quite soft in the heat, Ruby watched it carefully, and let the big drop at the end fall just at the right time, and in just the right place upon her envelope. Then she pressed the seal down upon it, and you can guess how proud she was when she saw her initial in the wax.
"Won't mamma be surprised when she gets this letter?" she asked gleefully. "She will wonder where I got the wax, and I am sure she will hardly believe that I made such a nice seal the very first time I ever used it."