“But you must decide on Aunt Allen’s gift, Del.  What shall it be?  What will be pretty?”

“You shall decide,” said I, amiably, turning to my husband.

“Oh, I have no notion of what is pretty,—­at least of but one thing,—­and that is not in Aunt Allen’s gift.”

He laughed, and I blushed, of course, as he pointed the compliment straight at me.

“But you must think.  I cannot decide, I have thought of five hundred things already.”

“Well, Laura,—­what do you say?” said he.

“I think a silver salver would 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!