GEORGIANA.  You get more attention than I do from my soldier.  You at least have the consolation of knowing you’re the girl he’s left behind.

BELLA.  ’Tain’t much consolation if I get left for good!  Say, will you ask Mr. Coleman to sort o’ look after him?  Ask him to please put him in the back row when there’s fighting—­and keep an eye on his health.  I’m afraid it’s dreadful damp being a soldier; and do you know that man actually catches cold if he forgets his rubbers and it sprinkles?

GEORGIANA.  I don’t think he ought to go if he’s so delicate; Mr. Coleman will take an interest in your friend, I know, if I ask him.  What’s his name?

BELLA.  Mr. Gootch.

GEORGIANA. Mr. Gootch! Yes, I can remember that.  But, you see, if he’s a soldier he must do his duty, whatever it is.

BELLA.  There’s no holding him back!  He’s jus’ as likely as not to lose his position at Snipleys, Crabford & Snipleys, too, but he will go!  It’s surprising to see a man with such a weak chest and delicate feet, so awful brave and persistent.

LOUISE. [Coming back.] I bore the children to death, so I left them.  What are all these bundles, Bella?

BELLA.  Christmas presents.  This is just the time of the year to buy, you know, you can get such bargains! and if there’s one thing I think nicer’n anything else to get cheap, it’s Christmas presents.

GEORGIANA.  You should do like Mrs. Carley, Bella, save half of the things you get one year to give away the next.

[She sits by the table and goes on with her work.

LOUISE.  I always do that.  I get so many things I can’t bear.

GEORGIANA.  But you must be careful not to send them back to the same place they came from!  That has happened.

LOUISE.  Georgiana!

[BELLA laughs out loud and sits on the sofa. LOUISE sits opposite GEORGIANA.

GEORGIANA.  What have you got?  Sit down and tell us.

BELLA.  Thank you, ma’am. [Delighted with the opportunity.  Taking up the different parcels.] Well, I’ve got an elegant pair of scissors for mother, marked down because of a flaw in the steel, but she’s near-sighted, and she don’t want to use ’em anyway—­it’s just to feel she has another pair.  Scissors is mother’s fad—­sort of born in her, I guess, for my mother’s mother was a kind of dressmaker.  She didn’t have robes and mantucks over her door, you know,—­she was too swell for that,—­she went out by the day!  And this is a real bronze Louis ink-stand for my sister’s husband, only cost thirty-nine cents and hasn’t got a thing the matter with it, so long as you don’t see the others—­if you see the others, you’ll observe that there’s a naked lady missing off the top part which I’m glad of anyway as I’m giving it to a gentleman, and he’ll never see the others besides.  And this is two boxes of writing paper; aren’t they huge! awful cheap with a lovely picture of an actress on top—­Lillian Russell in Mice and Men, I think, on one, and Jean Duresk the Opera Singer in Lonegrind on the other.  The boxes ’av got false bottoms—­so there ain’t very much writing material, but the rich effect’s there all the same.