everywhere one went one fell over an open trunk or a barrell containing
Silver or Linen.

Mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was
realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles, headache
tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets.

Sis got some lovely Clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman come
in and sow for me. Hannah and she used to interupt my most precious
Moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a
paper pattern to me. The sowing woman always had her mouth full of Pins,
and once, owing to my remarking that I wished I had been illagitimate,
so I could go away and live my own life, she swallowed one. It caused a
grate deal of excitement, with Hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar
to swallow to soften the pin. Well, it turned out all right, for she
kept on living, but she pretended to have sharp pains all over her here
and there, and if the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled
from spot to spot, it could not have hurt in so many Places.

Of course they blamed me, and I shut myself up more and more in my
Sanctuery. There I lived with the creatures of my dreams, and forgot for
a while that I was only a Sub-Deb, and that Leila's last year's tennis
clothes were being fixed over for me.

But how true what dear Shakspeare says:

dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain.
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.