“Ah, you see I don’t wear things—only a flannel jacket to be a bit tidy,” Miss Muniment returned. “I go in only for smart counterpanes, as you can see for yourself”; and she spread her white hands complacently over her coverlet of brilliant patchwork. “Now doesn’t that look to you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?” “Oh my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!” Lady Aurora interposed with visible anxiety. “Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forget. This only cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a present. Yes, only sixpence in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel three years ago. A young man who works with my brother and lives in that part offered him a couple of tickets; and he took one and I took one. When I say ‘I’ of course I mean he took the two; for how should I find (by which I naturally mean how should _he_ find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and of course, as my bed’s my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful counterpane of every colour of the rainbow. Oh there never was such luck as mine!” Rosy chattered, flashing her gay demented eyes at Hyacinth as if to irritate him with her contradictious optimism. “It’s very lovely, but if you’d like another for a change I’ve got a great many pieces,” Pinnie remarked with a generosity which made the young man feel she was acquitting herself finely. Rose Muniment laid her little hand on the dressmaker’s arm and responded straight: “No, not a change, not a change. How can there be a change when there’s already everything? There’s everything here—every colour that was ever seen or invented or dreamed of since the world began.” And with her other hand she stroked affectionately her variegated quilt. “You’ve a great many pieces, but you haven’t as many as there are here; and the more you should patch them together the more the whole thing would resemble this dear dazzling old friend. I’ve another idea, very very charming, and perhaps her ladyship can guess what it is.” Rosy kept her fingers on Pinnie’s arm and, smiling, turned her brilliant eyes from one of her female companions to the other as to associate and blend them as closely as possible in their interest in her. “In connexion with what we were talking about a few minutes ago—couldn’t your ladyship just go a little further in the same line?” Then as Lady Aurora looked troubled and embarrassed, blushing at being called upon to answer a conundrum, as it were, so publicly, her infirm friend came to her assistance. “It will surprise you at first, but it won’t when I’ve explained it: my idea is just simply a sweet pink dressing-gown!” “A sweet pink dressing-gown!” Lady Aurora repeated. “With a neat black trimming! Don’t you see the connexion with what we were talking of before our good visitors came in?”