Mary, my dear, I am very particular about my baskets. If ever I lend
you my diamonds, and you lose them, I may forgive you--I shall know
_that_ was an accident; but if I lend you a basket, and you don't
return it, don't look me in the face again. I always write my name on
them, so there's no excuse. And I don't know a greater piece of
impudence--and people are wonderfully impudent now-a-days--than to
think that because a thing only cost fourpence, you need not be at
the trouble of keeping it clean and dry, and of sending it back."
"Some more toast and water, please," said Chris.
Aunt Catherine helped him, and continued--"Hobbs is a careful man--he
has been with me ten years--he doesn't cut flowers recklessly as a
rule, but when I saw that basket I said, 'Hobbs, you've been very
extravagant.' He looked ashamed of himself, but he said, 'I understood
they was for Miss Kitty, m'm. She's been used to nice gardens, m'm.'
Hobbs lived with them in Berkshire before he came to me."
"It was very nice of Hobbs," said Chris, emphatically.
"Humph!" said Aunt Catherine, "the flowers were mine."
"Did you ever get to the barracks?" asked Chris, "and what was they
like when you did?"
"They were about as unlike Kitty's old home as anything could well be.
She has made her rooms pretty enough, but it was easy to see she is
hard up for flowers.
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