It is past ten, and Clara had better
pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'
Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady
Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away
with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was
not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her
service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the
cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make
herself generally useful.
It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the
wardrobe of everyday life--a trousseau in which nothing, except
half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends
of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of
the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether
extraordinary and unnatural.
'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed
the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from
Manchester, who lives at The Gables--you should have seen her new gowns
and things when she was married.
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