But Cora had decided in her own mind who it was that should be the first to wear the pretty lace affair, for as she looked at Dexie with the fluffy thing around her neck and throat, she seemed to suggest the very character she was to fill in the evening, and, as she removed it and laid it gently aside, Cora whispered to her mother: 

“It will suit her nicely, don’t you think?  What else would do to go with it?”

“Those ribbons and gloves match it perfectly; they were meant to go together, I expect, for an evening costume.  Just see what she takes a fancy to, and lay it aside; then use your own judgment.”

A little scream of delight from Elsie betokened another pleasant discovery.

“Gloves! boxes of gloves, and handkerchiefs by the set, and all hemmed, too!  Oh! and marked; see, these are my initials.  Blessings on the thoughtful person who sent me those, for my handkerchiefs disappear as mysteriously as ghosts.  Now, if I only unearth a box of shoe-laces, I’ll think my cup of joy quite full.”

“Shoe-laces! and they so cheap!” Dexie exclaimed in surprise.

“But I have to buy mine with my pocket-money.  I break so many of the tiresome things, that mother thinks it will make me more careful if I have to replace them myself.  But they are always in knots, and when I have to keep them neat and tidy at my own expense it leaves me little enough for chocolate creams.  Dear me!  I think they might have sent me a few dozen, so that I might get a chance to have one good ‘tuck in’ for once, as the street arabs say.”

“Why, Elsie, I am surprised at you,” was the mother’s mild rebuke.  “Surely you can feel grateful, without requiring shoe-laces to ’fill up your cup with joy,’” and there was a faint smile around the mouth that reproved in such quiet tones.

“Ah!  I know what ails me, mother dear.  ’From all selfishness, envy, uncharitableness,—­and all the rest of it, good Lord, deliver me.’  I’ll say it next Sunday with a different meaning to it, particularly if I get the shoe-laces.”

“Why, Elsie Gurney! how dare you speak those words so flippantly!” said Cora severely, looking at her sister in surprise and displeasure.

“I wasn’t thinking flippantly, if I did speak so.  I wasn’t, truly, mamma,” said Elsie, in a contrite tone.  “I never thought I was selfish and—­and all the other things when I said it over in church, but I do believe I am—­some—­anyway.  After this I will say ‘deliver me’ instead of ‘us.’”

“Hasty speeches often lead to thoughtful acts.  I will be very glad if the missing shoe-laces make my daughter a little more thoughtful about things of greater moment.  Do not look so shocked, Cora; it did not sound well, I know, but she did not mean it irreverently, I’m sure.  I remember when I was a child at home we all had to learn the fifty-first Psalm as a Lenten lesson, and once my little brother came through the rooms, singing it to