Here Mrs. Middlemass went on her knees, and with slow and exasperating deliberation, unfastened a parcel carefully done up in white muslin.  From the depths of this parcel she extracted a very thin and crackling silk of a shade between brick and terra-cotta, which was further shot here and there with little threads of pale blue and yellow.  This texture she held up in many lights, not praising it by any words, for she guessed well the effect it would have on her company.  She knew the Bells of old:  they were proof against anything that wasn’t silk, but at the glitter and sheen of real silk they gave way.  They instantly, one and all, fell down and worshipped it.

“It is pretty,” said Matty at last, with a little sigh, and she turned away as one who must not any longer contemplate so dazzling a temptation.

Mrs. Bell’s heart quite ached for her eldest-born at this critical juncture.  It was so natural for her to wish for silk attire when the hero was absolutely at the gates.  And such a hero!  So tall, so handsome, such an Adonis—­so aristocratic!  But, alas! silk could not be had for nothing.  It would be an insult to offer Bell’s old coat and the two pairs of trousers gone at the knees for this exquisite substance.

“Sixteen yards,” solemnly pronounced Mrs. Middlemass, when the silence had been sufficiently long.  “Sixteen yards for three pound ten.  There! it’s a present I’m making to you, Miss Matty.”

“I like it very much,” said Matty.

“Like it!  I should think you do.  It was the fellow of it I sold this morning to Lady Georgiana Higginbotham, of Castle Higgins.  She who is to be married next month.  ‘Middlemass,’ she said, when she saw it, ’I’m in love with it.  It has a sheen about it, and a quality.  Cut me twenty yards, Middlemass; I do declare I’ll wear it for my travelling dress, and no other.’  She’ll do it, too, Miss Matty, you’ll see.  And beautiful she’ll look.”

The three girls sighed.  They sighed in unison.  As there was a lover in the question, the two younger were willing that Matty should have a new frock.  But a silk!  Each girl wanted the silk for herself.

“It is exquisite,” said Matty.

“Exquisite,” repeated Alice.

“Quisite,” said Sophy.

“I’ll put it away for you, miss,” said the pedler, beginning to pack up her other things.  “There, take it, miss,” she said, flinging a long sweep of the glittering texture over Matty’s arm.  “Now, it does become you, my dear.  Doesn’t it, ma’am?” turning to the mother.  “Well, now, I never noticed it before, but Miss Matty has a great look of Lady Georgiana.  Remarkable likeness!  You wouldn’t be known from her, miss when you had that dress on.  Their eyes! the complexion! the figure! all ditto, ditto, ditto.”

The girls smiled; but what amount of flattery will not one accept when judiciously offered?  They were all pleased to hear Mrs. Middlemass compare one of their number to Lady Georgiana, although they knew perfectly that the pedler had never in the whole course of her life even spoken to that young lady, who was a head and shoulders taller than Matty, and as unlike her in all particulars as a girl could be.