"No, indeed," said her mother; "that is your greatest fault, Amy."
"Oh, well, mamma, Rose has enough for both; you must rub us together, as they do light red and Prussian blue, to make a neutral tint. But oh, what a ribbon! oh, mother, what a love of a ribbon! Rose! Rose! look at this ribbon! And oh, those buttons! Fred, I do believe they are for your new coat! Oh, and those studs, father, where did you get them? What's in that box? a bracelet for Rose, I know! oh, how beautiful! perfectly exquisite! And here—oh!"
Here something happened to check the volubility of the little speaker; for as she hastily, and with the license of a petted child, pulled the articles from the parcel, she was startled to find lying among the numerous colored things a black crape veil. Sombre, dark, and ill-omened enough it looked there, with pink, and lilac, and blue, and glittering bijouterie around it!
Amy dropped it with instinctive repugnance, and there was a general exclamation, "Mamma, what's this? how came it here? what did you get this for?"
"Strange!" said Olivia; "it is a mourning veil. Of course I did not order it. How it came in here nobody knows; it must have been a mistake of the clerk."
"Certainly it is a mistake," said Amy; "we have nothing to do with mourning, have we?"
"No, to be sure; what should we mourn for?" chimed in little Fred and Mary.
"What a dark, ugly thing it is!" said Amy, unfolding and throwing it over her head; "how dismal it must be to see the world through such a veil as this!"
"And yet till one has seen the world through a veil like that, one has never truly lived," said another voice, joining in the conversation.
"Ah, Father Payson, are you there?" said two or three voices at once.