n insisted upon giving up the smart
paper and everything to Miss Letitia. She had always given up
everything to Mr. Jones, she did so now to Master MacGreedy, and was
quite unaccustomed to keep anything for her own share. She did not give
this explanation herself, but so it was.

The cracker that thus fell into the hands of Miss Letitia was one of
those new-fashioned ones that have a paper pattern of some article of
dress wrapped up in them instead of a bonbon. This one was a paper
bonnet made in the latest _mode_--of green tissue-paper; and Miss Letitia
stuck it on the top of her chignon, with an air that the widow envied
from the bottom of her heart. She had not the gift of "carrying off"
her clothes. But to the tutor, on the contrary, it seemed to afford
the most extreme amusement; and as Miss Letitia bowed gracefully hither
and thither in the energy of her conversation with the widow, the green
paper fluttering with each emphasis, he fairly shook with delight, his
shadow dancing like a maniac beside him. He had scattered some more
powder on the coals, and it may have been that the smoke got into her
eyes, and confused her ideas of colour, but Miss Letitia was struck
with a fervid and otherwise unaccountable admiration for the paper ends
of the cracker, which were most unusually ugly. One was of a sallowish
salmon-colour, and transparent, the other was of brick-red paper with a
fringe. As Miss Letitia turned them over, she saw, to her unspeakable
delight, that there were several yards of each material, and her
peculiar genius instantly seized upon the fact that in the present
rage for double skirts there might be enough of the two kinds to
combine into a fashionable dress.

It had never struck her before that a dirty salmon went well with
brick-red. "They blend so becomingly, my dear," she murmured; "and I
think the under-skirt will sit well, it is so stiff."

The widow did not reply. The fumes of the tutor's compound made her
sleepy, and though she nodded to Miss Letitia's observations, it was
less from appreciation of their force, than from inability to hold up
her head. She was dreaming uneasy, horrible dreams, like nightmares; in
which from time to time there mingled expressions of doubt and
dissatisfaction which fell from Miss Letitia's lips. "Just half-a-yard
short--no gores--false hem," (and the melancholy reflection that)
"flounces take so much stuff." Then the tutor's face kept appearing and
vanishing wit