A certain amount of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them as I did on this occasion.

Looking over my list, I must confess to a flush of real enjoyment at finding carte blanche for a scarf.  “Now, that is something like!” said I.  “I can see now how pleasantly an artist feels, or would feel, at an order for a picture,—­’your own subject,—­your own terms.’  Miss Patty Jones knows what is what, and shall be my patroness.”

And did I not vindicate triumphantly Miss Patty’s confidence?  I knew better than to buy her a gray and brown thing, merely because she, too, was gray and brown.  I wreathed her with lilies and hyacinths and French green leaves, and she blossomed under it like a rose.  If she were not the garland, she wore it, and so borrowed bloom and gay freshness.  She extolled my taste to all Weston.

Then Mrs. Eben Loring had concluded on the whole that I should buy her a hat, in Maiden Lane, at the very tip-top milliner’s.  The thought of my return was somewhat embittered by the prospective necessity of carrying two very large bandboxes in my lap, in case of rain.  Rain might not unreasonably be expected in the course of a three days’ journey.  Think of all the bandboxes that in such a case would be put in at the coach-window by the driver, to be held in the hapless laps of the nine passengers!  Almost I was persuaded to leave my own black satin bonnet, and perambulate the streets of New York in my travelling-calash, which looked exactly like, and was nearly of the size of, a “bellows-top shay.”

I was thinking of this last sacrifice, when my husband said, in a dreamy, bewildered way,—­

“Here are five boxes, mother, two bundles, and the rest of these books.  I give up!”

“Give up?  Not I!  Now, where a man’s energies are exhausted, a woman’s just begin to show themselves.  First and foremost, lock this trunk, and let me put the key in my pocket.  That’s one thing done, and can’t be undone.”

He stepped back from the trunk.

“What’s this? all your clothes on the floor!”

“Well, yes, my dear, most of ’em.  You see, I couldn’t leave Zipporah Haven’s shawl out, which she sends to her grandmother; and I must put in these bundles of the Burts’s, and Mary Skinner’s box of linen thread.  If my own things are lost, why, they must be replaced, you know, my dear; that is all.”

“And we must keep a good lookout, ourselves, that our bandboxes and bundles don’t fall off behind,” replied the Dominie, faintly.

“Yes; and you can put the small trunk under my feet, and the big basket under your own, and you will keep an eye on my red shawl,—­and pray don’t lose the umbrella, nor your great-coat, nor your cane.  I will, on my part, see to these three small bundles, and my parasol.  Doubtless we shall go on smoothly as need be, only I am afraid you won’t be able to think up many sermons on the highway.  There!  I forgot the jar of currant-jelly to go to Ruth Hoyt’s aunt!  However, we must manage somehow.  You are sure our names are down at the stage-office?”