The most unpardonable sin one woman can commit against another, is to copy her clothes and bring the style out as her own idea. It is intensely irritating! If she admits she has copied or asks your leave beforehand, it is a different matter. You are even gratified then, for "imitation is the sincerest flattery." But to have your ideas stolen and brought out in such a way as to convey the impression that you are the imitator, to say the least, arouses murderous intentions in your heart! There are times, too, when you receive a shock to your vanity; times when you are quite satisfied with your appearance, and find to your dismay that everyone is not of the same opinion. I remember once when I was dining out and feeling very pleased with my _tout ensemble_, I was disillusioned in a way that not only upset my self-confidence, but my gravity at the same time. To heighten the general effect, I had stuck a patch near my mouth. (Oh, the minds of the last century! From whose fertile brain did it emanate, I wonder, the fact that a piece of black plaster on the face, should be so eminently becoming!) Imagine my horror when the maid, an old servant I knew very well, took me aside and whispered confidentially, "Oh, Miss! you've got _such_ a big smut on your chin!" Clothes are altogether a great nuisance, I think. How tired you get of the regular routine of the morning toilet; always the same, never any variety. Why are we not born, like dogs, with nice cosy rugs all over us, so that we should just have to get out of bed in the morning, shake ourselves, and be ready at once to go down to breakfast and do the business of the day? "Ah well! God knows what's best for us all," as an old charwoman said to me, years ago, when she was remarking on how I had grown. I never saw the application of the remark, and do not think I ever shall. Whether my growth was a subject to deplore, and she tried to comfort me, or not, I cannot say; but she was evidently proud of the remark, for she repeated it three times! CHAPTER VI. ON CHRISTMAS. It is such a prickly time. Not only everything but everybody is positively bristling with prickles. Go where you will, you cannot avoid these pointed, jagged edges. You come across them everywhere, and have to suffer accordingly. To begin with, there is the holly. Now you could not find anything lovelier in the way of foliage than holly, only such a little suffices. At Christmas time you are literally saturated with it. In every house you enter, in everything you eat, at every step you take, nothing but holly, holly, holly.