Laura ceased talking, but rocked herself swiftly to and fro in her
chair. It is not necessary to say we were in our chambers,--as, since
our British cousins have ridiculed our rocking-chairs, they are all
banished from the parlor. Consequently we remain in our chambers to rock
and be useful, and come into the parlor to be useless and uncomfortable
in _fauteuils_, made, as the chair-makers tell us, "after the line of
beauty." Laura and I both detest them, and Polly says, "Nothing can be
worse for the spine of a person's back." To be

"Stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair,"

let anybody try a modern drawing-room. So Laura and I have cane
sewing-chairs, which, it is needless to add, rock,--rock eloquently,
too. They wave, as the boat waves with the impetus of the sea, gently,
calmly, slowly,--or, as conversation grows animated, as disputes arise,
as good stories are told, one after another, so do the sympathizing and
eloquent rocking-chairs keep pace with our conversation, stimulating or
soothing, as it chances.

And now I come to my first trouble,--first, and, as it happened, of long
standing now; insomuch that, when Laura asked me once, gravely, why I
had not made it a vital objection, in the first place, I had not a word
to reply, but just--rocked.

She, Laura, was stitching on some shirts for "him." They were intended
as a wedding-gift from herself, and were beautifully made. Laura
despised a Wheeler-and-Wilson, and all its kindred,--and the shirts
looked like shirts, consequently.