“Home I returned a happy and proud woman, wise in my own conceit, a thrifty fashion-monger, laden like a pedlar, with huge packages in stout brown holland tied up with whipcord, and genteel little parcels papered and pack-threaded in shopman-like style. At last we were safely stowed in the pony-chaise, which had much ado to hold us, my little black bag as usual in my lap. When we ascended the steep hill out of B—— a sudden puff of wind took at once my cottage-bonnet and my large cloak, blew the bonnet off my head so that it hung behind me, suspended by the riband, and fairly snapped the string of the cloak, which flew away much in the style of John Gilpin’s renowned in story. My companion, pitying my plight, exerted himself manfully to regain the fly-away garments, shoved the head into the bonnet, or the bonnet over the head (I do not know which phrase best describes the manœuvre), with one hand and recovered the refractory cloak with the other. It was wonderful what a tug he was forced to give before that obstinate cloak could be brought round; it was swelled with the wind like a bladder, animated, so to say, like a living thing, and threatened to carry pony and chaise and riders and packages backward down the hill, as if it had been a sail of a ship. At last the contumacious garment was mastered. We righted, and by dint of sitting sideways and turning my back on my kind comrade, I got home without any further damage than the loss of my bag, which, though not missed before the chaise had been unladen, had undoubtedly gone by the board in the gale, and I lamented my trusty companion without in the least foreseeing the use it would probably be of to my reputation. “Immediately after dinner I produced my purchases. They were much admired, and the quantity when spread out in our little room being altogether dazzling, and the quality satisfactory, the cheapness was never doubted. Nobody calculated, and the bills being really lost in the lost bag, and the particular prices just as much lost in memory (the ninepenny calico was the only article whose cost occurred to me), I passed, without telling anything like a fib, merely by a discreet silence, for the best and thriftiest bargainer that ever went shopping. After some time spent very pleasantly in admiration on one side and display on the other we were interrupted by the demand for some of the little articles which I had forgotten. “‘The sewing-silk, please, ma’am.’ “‘Sewing-silk! I don’t know—look about.’ “Ah! she might look long enough! no sewing-silk was there. ‘Very strange.’ “Presently came other enquiries. ‘Where’s the tape?’ ‘The tape!’ “‘Yes, my dear; and the needles, pins, cotton, stay-laces, boot-laces.’ “‘The bobbin, the ferret, shirt buttons, shoe-strings?’ quoth she of the sewing-silk, taking up the cry, and forthwith began a search.... At last she suddenly desisted from her rummage.