“Cushions and lampshades seem to be the only things one can make oneself,” said the Princess disconsolately, “and Mamma has twenty-four lampshades already and dozens and dozens of cushions. We must think of something cheap too. I’m so awfully poor.” Year after year this problem re-emerged. Fortunately the powers that controlled the purse-strings decreed that all materials for presents should be bought out of the Princess’s own money, but that in the matter of “making up” the exchequer would provide the needful funds. So the harassed child was forced into the manufacture of those articles which are cheap in the initial outlay but rather expensive to complete, such as slippers, worked picture-frames, cushions, and so on. One Christmas, at an acute crisis when for some reason the list of presents expanded to twenty-eight, the advent into fashion of ribbon-work saved her from despair. She begged some odd pieces of silk and brocade from Her Majesty’s workroom for the purpose of making glove and handkerchief sachets. Ribbon-work is, as everyone knows who has done it, capable, especially the broad kind, of making the maximum of effect with the minimum of effort. So while I hastily sketched simple but pleasing designs of apple-blossom or violets on the corners of everything, the Princess sat and worked feverishly. She was an indefatigable and rapid needlewoman--perhaps a little too rapid to be very accurate--and got through a tremendous amount of work, sticking to it hour after hour if the occasion demanded it and any one would read to her. To this day certain portions of “Kidnapped” or “Hereward” seem inextricably interwoven in my mind with the sound of those long-drawn gay ribbons and an intensely absorbed face surrounded by tumbled golden hair, bending in the lamplight over her self-imposed task. Sometimes the Princess and Prince Joachim when they were sitting in the evening with the Empress would both be working at the very Christmas present destined for her, and she was therefore bound, under often-reiterated promises, to ignore what they were doing and to turn her eyes conscientiously in another direction. Her Majesty often laughingly complained of the suspicions they both harboured as to her integrity in this matter. They would erect newspaper screens around themselves and their occupations, and if the screens fell down, as frequently happened, then “Mamma” had to shut her eyes or turn away her head until they were temporarily re-erected, only to fall down again in another five minutes.