What she piqued herself upon, as arts in which she excelled, was
making candle-lighters, or "spills" (as she preferred calling
them), of coloured paper, cut so as to resemble feathers, and
knitting garters in a variety of dainty stitches. I had once said,
on receiving a present of an elaborate pair, that I should feel
quite tempted to drop one of them in the street, in order to have
it admired; but I found this little joke (and it was a very little
one) was such a distress to her sense of propriety, and was taken
with such anxious, earnest alarm, lest the temptation might some
day prove too strong for me, that I quite regretted having ventured
upon it. A present of these delicately-wrought garters, a bunch of
gay "spills," or a set of cards on which sewing-silk was wound in a
mystical manner, were the well-known tokens of Miss Matty's favour.
But would any one pay to have their children taught these arts? or,
indeed, would Miss Matty sell, for filthy lucre, the knack and the
skill with which she made trifles of value to those who loved her?
I had to come down to reading, writing, and arithmetic; and, in
reading the chapter every morning, she always coughed before coming
to long words. I doubted her power of getting through a
genealogical chapter, with any number of coughs.
Pages:
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236