the bazaar, the great question of her dress for
the occasion. Previous to that she would fain have been energetic in
collecting and making things for sale at her stall, for she really
taught herself to be anxious that the negro soldiers' orphans
should have provision made for them; but, alas! her energy was
all repressed, and she found that she was not to be allowed to do
anything in that direction.

"Things of that sort would not go down at all now-a-days, Margaret,"
said Mrs Mackenzie. "Nobody would trouble themselves to carry them
away. There are tradesmen who furnish the stalls, and mark their
own prices, and take back what is not sold. You charge double the
tradesman's price, that's all."

Margaret, when her eyes were thus opened, of course ceased to make
little pincushions, but she felt that her interest in the thing was
very much lowered. But a word must be said as to that question of
the dress. Miss Mackenzie, when she was first interrogated as to her
intentions, declared her purpose of wearing a certain black silk
dress which had seen every party at Mrs Stumfold's during Margaret's
Littlebath season. To this her cousin demurred, and from demurring
proceeded to the enunciation of a positive order. The black silk
dress in question should not be worn. Now Miss Mackenzie chose to be
still in mourning on the second of June, the day of the bazaar, her
brother having died in September, and had no fitting garment, so she
said, other than the black silk in question. Whereupon Mrs Mackenzie,
without further speech to her cousin on the subject, went out and
purchased a muslin covered all over with the prettiest little frecks
of black, and sent a milliner to Margaret, and provided a bonnet of
much the same pattern, the gayest, lightest, jauntiest, falsest,
most make-belief-mourning bonnet that ever sprang from the art of a
designer in bonnets--and thus nearly broke poor Margaret's heart.

"People should never have things given them, who can't buy for
themselves," she said, with tears in her eyes, "because of course
they know what it means."

"But, my dearest," said Mrs Mackenzie, "young ladies who never have
any money of their own at all always accept presents from all their
relations. It is their special privilege."

"Oh, yes, young ladies; but not women like me who are waiting to find
out whether they are ruined or not."

The difficulty, however, was at last overcome, and Margaret, with
many inward upbraidings of