took a fortune for
persons of sensibility to exchange sentiments.

The consequence to country-people of this last-mentioned fact was, that
everybody who went anywhere took everybody's letters, and, as there were
no expresses, added, of course, everybody's packages and messages. And
the consequence of this was, that everybody made everybody's purchases,
whether gowns, books, bonnets, or what not. It mattered little who did
errands, so only they were done. Generally, the one store-keeper bought
our bonnets when he went to Boston for his yearly stock of goods, and
our one bonnet lasted in those days a year, being retrimmed for winter
weather. I remember, too, when our one store-keeper, mingling in the
aesthetic conversation at one of our parties, where Art was on the
_tapis_, made a comical mistake, but one natural enough, too,--stating
that he could buy, and had bought, Vandykes for ten dollars. We were not
thinking of exactly the same kind of Vandyke that he was.

Many a time have I carried in my trunk more letters than the mail-bag
did to Boston, and conscientiously finished all the parish's business
before touching my own.

A certain amount of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and
laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter
myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them
as I did on this occasion.

Looking over my list, I must confess to a flush of real enjoyment at
finding _carte blanche_ for a scarf. "Now, that is something like!" said
I. "I can see now how pleasantly an artist feels, or would feel, at an
order for a picture,--'your own subject,--your own terms.' Miss Patty
Jones knows what is what, and shall be my patroness."

And did I not vindicate triumphantly Miss Patty's confidence? I knew
better than to buy her a gray and brown thing, merely because she, too,
was gray and brown. I wreathed her with lilies and hyacinths and French
green leaves, and she blossomed under it like a rose. If she were not
the garland, she wore it, and so borrowed bloom and gay freshness. She
extolled my taste to all Weston.

Then Mrs. Eben Loring had concluded on the whole that I should buy her a
hat, in Maiden Lane, at the very tip-top milliner's. The thought of my
return was somewhat embittered by the prospective necessity of carrying
two very large bandboxes in my lap, in case of rain. Rain might not
unreasonably be expected in the course of a three days' journey. Thi