I remember once when I was dining out and feeling very pleased with my tout ensemble, I was disillusioned in a way that not only upset my self-confidence, but my gravity at the same time.  To heighten the general effect, I had stuck a patch near my mouth. (Oh, the minds of the last century!  From whose fertile brain did it emanate, I wonder, the fact that a piece of black plaster on the face, should be so eminently becoming!) Imagine my horror when the maid, an old servant I knew very well, took me aside and whispered confidentially, “Oh, Miss! you’ve got such a big smut on your chin!”

Clothes are altogether a great nuisance, I think.  How tired you get of the regular routine of the morning toilet; always the same, never any variety.  Why are we not born, like dogs, with nice cosy rugs all over us, so that we should just have to get out of bed in the morning, shake ourselves, and be ready at once to go down to breakfast and do the business of the day?

“Ah well!  God knows what’s best for us all,” as an old charwoman said to me, years ago, when she was remarking on how I had grown.  I never saw the application of the remark, and do not think I ever shall.  Whether my growth was a subject to deplore, and she tried to comfort me, or not, I cannot say; but she was evidently proud of the remark, for she repeated it three times!

CHAPTER VI.

ON CHRISTMAS.

It is such a prickly time.  Not only everything but everybody is positively bristling with prickles.  Go where you will, you cannot avoid these pointed, jagged edges.  You come across them everywhere, and have to suffer accordingly.

To begin with, there is the holly.  Now you could not find anything lovelier in the way of foliage than holly, only such a little suffices.  At Christmas time you are literally saturated with it.  In every house you enter, in everything you eat, at every step you take, nothing but holly, holly, holly.

Then there are the Church decorations, begun generally a week beforehand.  All the ladies of the place assemble in the vestry, attracted there by divers reasons.  Some, by the desire to have a finger in every pie; some, because it is an opportunity to meet the curates; and some, but a very few, from real love of the work.  I cannot understand these latter, I must confess.  It is the most disagreeable work I have ever undertaken.  Such dirty work, too!  Your hands or your gloves grow perfectly black under the operation; and it is a curious thing, that when this stage is reached, your nose invariably begins to itch, and you forget the condition of your fingers, and—­well, the result is anything but becoming!  It is so comfortable, too, walking about the vestry, isn’t it?  The holly grows so affectionate to your ankles, and at every step squash goes a berry, and all its middle oozes out and sticks to the sole of your boot.  When you go home, you find you are at least an inch taller by reason of the many corpses of berries you have collected!