ketches, needlework, and flowers.

"Do you know, Eleanor," said I, when we were dressing for dinner one
evening before a toilette-table that had been tastefully adorned for our
use by the daughters of the house, "I wonder if Yorkshire women _are_ as
'house-proud' as they call themselves? I think our villagers are, in the
important points of cleanliness and solid comfort, and of course we are
at the Vicarage as to _that_--Keziah keeps us all like copper kettles;
but don't you think we might have a little more house-pride about
tasteful pretty refinements? It perhaps is rather a waste of time
arranging all these vases and baskets of flowers every day, but they are
_very_ nice to look at, and I think it civilizes one."

"_You're_ not to blame," said Eleanor decisively. "You're south-country
to the backbone, and French on the top. It is we hard north-country
folk, we business people, who neglect to cultivate 'the beautiful.'
We're quite wrong. But I think the beautiful is revenged on us," added
she with one of her quick, bright looks, "by withdrawing itself. There's
nothing comparable for ugliness to the people of a manufacturing town."

My mind was running on certain very ingenious and tasteful methods of
hanging nosegays on the wall.

"Those baskets with ferns and flowers in, against the wall, were lovely,
weren't they?" said I. "Do you think we shall ever be able to think of
such pretty things?"

"We're not fools," said Eleanor briefly. "We shall do it when we set our
minds to it. Meantime, we must make notes of whatever strikes us."

"There are plenty of jolly, old-fashioned flowers in the garden at
home," said I. It was a polite way of expressing my inward regret that
we had no tropical orchids or strange stove-plants. And Eleanor danced
round me, and improvised a song beginning:

"There are ferns by Ewden's waters,
And heather on the hill."

From the better adornment of the Vicarage to the better adornment of
ourselves was a short stride. Most of the young ladies in these country
homes were very prettily dressed. Not _a la_ Mrs. Perowne. Not in that
milliner's handbook style dear to "Promenades" and places of public
resort; but more daintily, and with more attention to the prettiest and
most convenient of the prevailing fashions than Eleanor's and my
costumes displayed.

The toilettes of one young lady in particular won our admiration; and
when we learned that her pretty things were made by herself