be pretty, and useful, too."

"Pretty and useful. Then let it be a silver salver, and be done with
it," said he.

This notion of being "done with it" is so mannish! Here was my Gordian
knot cut at once! However, there was no help for it,--though now, more
than ever, since there was no danger of a duplicate, did I long for the
fifty thousand different beautiful things the fifty dollars would buy.

Circumstances aided us, too, in coming to a conclusion. I was rather
tired of rocking on these billows of uncertainty, even with the chance
of plucking gems from the depths. And Mrs. Harris was coming the next
day to tea, and to go away early to see Piccolomini sing and sparkle.

When we sat down that next day at the table, I poured the tea into a
cup, and placed it on the prettiest little silver tray, and Polly handed
it to Mrs. Harris as if she had done that particular thing all her life.

"Beautiful!" said Mrs. Harris, as it sparkled along back; "one of your
wedding-gifts?"

"Yes," I answered, carelessly,--"Aunt Allen's."

So much was well got over. My hope was that Mrs. Harris, who talked
well, and was never weary of that sort of well-doing, would keep on her
own subjects of interest, to the exclusion of mine. Therefore, when she
said pleasantly, _en passant_,--

"By the way, Delphine, I see you have taken my advice about
wedding-presents. You know I always abominated that parading of gifts."

Laura hastened to the rescue, saying,--

"Yes, we quite agree with you, and remember your decided opinions on
that subject. Did you say you had been to the Aquarial Gardens?"

How I wished I had been self-possessed enough to tell the whole story,
with its ridiculous side out, and make a good laugh over it, as it
deserved!--for Mrs. Harris wouldn't stay in the Aquarial Gardens, which
she pronounced a disgusting exhibition of "Creep and Crawl," and that
it was all a set of little horrors; but swung back to wedding-gifts and
wedding-times.

"'When I was young,--ah! woful _when!_--
That I should say _when_ I was young!'

"it wasn't fashionable, or, I should say, necessary, to buy something for
a bride," said Mrs. Harris, meditatively, and looking back--as we could
see by her eyes--a long way.

For my part, I thought she had much better choose some other subject,
considering everything. Certainly she had been one of the ten I had
counted on. But she suddenly collected herself!

"I never look at a great needle-book, (