trim it like any London milliner. But, Anne, you must consider it is
a great improvement in me to allow that respectable people must be
neat. I used to allow it in theory, but not in practice.'

'I do not think I ever saw you untidy, Lizzie,' said Anne, 'except
after a day's nutting in the hanging wood.'

'Oh yes, I could generally preserve a little outward tidiness,' said
Elizabeth; 'besides, a visit at Merton Hall is very different from
every day in shabby old Abbeychurch. No, you must know that when I
was twelve years old, I was supposed to be capable of taking care of
my own wardrobe; and for some time all went on very smoothly, only
that I never did a stitch towards mending anything.'

'Did a beneficent fairy do it for you, then?'

'Not a sprite, nor even a brownie, but one of the old wrinkled kind
of fairies. Old Margaret, that kindest of nurses, could not bear to
see her dear Miss Lizzie untidy, or to hear her dear Miss Lizzie
scolded, so she mended and mended without saying anything,
encouraging me in habits of arrant slovenliness, and if I had but
known it, of deceit. Dear old Margery, it was a heart-breaking thing
when she went away, to all from Winifred upwards, and to none more
than to me, who could remember those two melancholy years when she
often seemed my only friend, when I was often naughty and Papa angry
with me, and I feeling motherless and wretched, used to sit on her
lap and cry. Dear old Margery, it is a shame to abuse her in spite
of the mischief her over-kindness did us all. Well, when our new
maid came, on the supposition that Miss Woodbourne took care of her
own clothes, she never touched them; and as Margaret's work was not