This was some consolation to me for the paperers and painters certainly did not like it. I used to enjoy hearing what they said to each after Lalage had finished with them. Before and after she dealt with the men she used to consult with my mother about clothes. Miss Battersby was admitted to these council meetings. I never was. Patterns of materials arrived from the most distant shops. Some came direct to my mother. I used to see them piled up behind the letters on the breakfast table. Others came to Miss Battersby, who brought them over in the Thormanby’s pony trap. Still more were addressed to Lalage at the rectory. I used to send for these in the morning and it was while she waited for them that Lalage gave the paperers and painters her opinion of their incompetence. It seemed to me quite impossible that any one, during those frenzied six weeks, could have thought calmly on any serious subject. But Lalage is a very wonderful young woman and my mother is able to retain her self-possession under the most trying circumstances. They managed somehow to snatch an hour or two for that long talk about my future of which my mother had spoken to me. I do not know whether Miss Battersby’s advice was asked. Mine certainly was not. Nor was I told at the time the result of the deliberations. That leaked out long afterward, when the wedding was over and we had returned home to settle down, I scarcely hoped, in peace. I suspected, of course, that I should be made to do something, and I was agreeably surprised that no form of labour was directly imposed on me for some time. Lalage, acting no doubt on my mother’s advice, decided to shepherd rather than goad me along the way on which it was decided that I should go.