“I never bought her onything a’ her days, if it wasna ance that bit wee coral necklace, that she wore when she was a little bairn--and she aye has it in her drawer yet, for puir auld Jenny’s sake,” mused Jenny at the shop window; “and I’m no like to need muckle siller mysel, unless there’s some sair downcome at hand. I wouldna say but I’ll be feared at the price, wi’ a’ this grand shop to keep up--but I think I never saw onything sae bonnie, and I’ll just get up a stout heart, and gang in and try.” But many difficulties beset this daring enterprise of Jenny’s. First, the impossibility of having brought to her the one magnificent gown of gowns--then a fainting of horror at the price--then a sudden bewilderment and wavering, consequent upon the sight of a hundred others as glorious as the first. While Jenny mused and pondered with curved brow and closed lips, two or three very fine gentlemen, looking on with unrestrained amusement, awoke her out of her deliberations, and out of her first awe of themselves, into a very distinct and emphatic fuff of resentment, and Jenny’s decision was made at last somewhat abruptly, in the midst of a smothered explosion of laughter, which sent her hasty short steps pattering out of the shop, in intense wrath. But in spite of Jenny’s expanded nostrils, and scarcely restrainable vituperation, Jenny carried off triumphantly, in her arms, the gown of gowns; and Jenny’s indignation did not lessen the swell of admiring pride with which she contemplated, pressed to her bosom tenderly, the white paper parcel wherein her gift lay hid. “Ye’ll let me ken how you like this, Miss Menie,” said Jenny, peremptorily, thrusting the parcel into Menie’s hand, at the door of her mother’s room; “and see if some o’ your grand London mantua-makers canna make such a gown out o’t as ye might wear ony place. Take it ben--I’m no wanting ye to look at it here.” “But what is it?” asked Menie, wonderingly. “You have naething ado but open it and see,” was the answer; “and ye can put it on on your birthday if you like--that’s the 10th o’ next month--there’s plenty o’ time to get it made--and I’ll gang and ask thae strange folk about the dinner mysel.” But neither message nor voice could reach Jenny for a full hour thereafter. Jenny was a little afraid of thanks, and could not be discovered in parlour or kitchen, though the whole “flat” grew vocal with her name. Penetrating at last into the depths of the dark closet where Jenny slept, Menie found her seated on her trunk, with her fingers in her ears; but this precaution had evidently been quite ineffectual so far as Jenny’s sharp sense of hearing was concerned. Menie Laurie put her own arms within the projected arm of the follower of the family, and drew her away to her mother’s room. Like a culprit, faintly resisting, Jenny went.