interrupted I, 'and I shall love you
the better for it; but all this is not neatness, but frippery. These
rufflings, and pinkings, and patchings will only make us hated by all
the wives of our neighbours. No, my children,' continued I, more
gravely, 'those gowns may be altered into something of a plainer cut;
for finery is very unbecoming in us, who want the means of decency. I
do not know whether such flouncing and shredding is becoming even in
the rich, if we consider, upon a moderate calculation, that the
nakedness of the indigent world might be clothed from the trimmings of
the vain.'

"This remonstrance had the proper effect: they went with great
composure, that very instant, to change their dress; and the next day
I had the satisfaction of finding my daughters, at their own request,
employed in cutting up their trains into Sunday waistcoats for Dick
and Bill, the two little ones; and, what was still more satisfactory,
the gowns seemed improved by this curtailing." And again when he
discovered the two girls making a wash for their faces:--"My daughters
seemed equally busy with the rest; and I observed them for a good
while cooking something over the fire. I at first supposed they were
assisting their mother, but little Dick informed me, in a whisper,
that they were making a wash for the face. Washes of all kinds I had a
natural antipathy to; for I knew that, instead of mending the
complexion, they spoil it. I therefore approached my chair by sly
degrees to the fire, and grasping the poker, as if it wanted mending,
seemingly by accident overturned the whole composition, and it was too
late to begin another."

All this is done with such a light, homely touch, that one gets
familiarly to know these people without being aware of it. There is no
insistance. There is no dragging you along by the collar; confronting
you with certain figures; and compelling you to look at this and study
that. The artist stands by you, and laughs in his quiet way; and you
are laughing too, when suddenly you find that human beings have
silently come into the void before you; and you know them for friends;
and even after the vision has faded away, and the beautiful light and
colour and glory of romance-land have vanished, you cannot forget
them. They have become part of your life; you will take them to the
grave with you.

The story, as every one perceives, has its obvious blemishes. "There
are an hundred faults in this Thing," says Gold