ted to her
service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the
cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make
herself generally useful.

It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the
wardrobe of everyday life--a trousseau in which nothing, except
half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends
of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of
the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether
extraordinary and unnatural.

'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed
the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from
Manchester, who lives at The Gables--you should have seen her new gowns
and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with
my brother James--he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady
Mary--and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the
wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses--such hats--such
bonnets--such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those
grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out
for one to look at--such silks and satins--and trimmed--ah! how those
dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get
herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'

'Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were
going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.'

'Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor
with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she'd get
all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go
bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.'

'Well, Clara, I'd rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble
about the ghylls and crags just as I like.' There was a pale yellow
Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a
wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question,
she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured
cloth, almost new from the tailor's hands, with a little cloth toque to
match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary's
wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and
careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious
and frugal in all things--a really