"Oh, uncle, I can't help crying--then, I like to cry!" exclaimed Susan, finding the old Colonel really concerned, and disposed to carry out his threat. "To think they should be for _me_--to think you should have thought of me in India! Do you suppose I could just say, 'Thank you?' Nobody ever gave me anything all my life before--and oh, uncle, to take the trouble of _thinking_ of me!" "If that is a troublesome operation, I have taken a great deal of trouble about you, one time and another, Susan," said Colonel Sutherland. "Now, dry your eyes, my love, and tell me if you approve of my taste. They are nothing extraordinary, you little goose--you will make me ashamed of my bundle. Why, everybody brings such things from India, and bring them very often to people they care much less about than I do about my little niece. If I had been richer, you should have seen what we can do in the East; but I just managed, you perceive, to get you one shawl." Which shawl the Colonel extricated accordingly, as he spoke. Poor Susan, afraid he might think her foolish, managed to stop her crying, and gazed--half with dismay, half with admiration--at all the pretty things before her. What could _she_ do with them? Colonel Sutherland, it was true, knew that she never was allowed to see anybody, or to make any friends, but a fact which is alien to nature makes no impression upon a natural mind. He could not remember or suppose that a young girl had no possible use for the pretty, simple dress he had brought, and looked on with a pleased face to see the effect of his gifts, as Susan began to examine them. Peggy, going backward and forward, saw it was now time enough for her to interpose, and, with a genuine woman's interest, plunged into the delightful investigation, which Susan--flushed and agitated quite out of her wont, and tremulous with many new sensations--had just concluded, when Horace entered the room.