Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/310

292 “It’s funny,” said Ralph Weston, “that a man should have sent you a box of embroidered doilies; they seem more  like a woman’s present,” and he scanned the card which  bore the name of one of his bachelor friends, Mr. Henry  Filbert. Brenda happened to be in the room when Ralph said this, and she colored a little at his words. He glanced at her rather mischievously, as he held the card in his hands, and then, as she came over to the table, and looked at the  gifts which had most recently arrived, she suddenly remembered.

“There, those doilies are from cousin Arabella, and Mr. Filbert’s card goes with this book. The boxes they came in were about the same size.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Weston, taking in his hands the beautiful edition of the “Complete Angler,” “this is something like. I am glad that somebody thinks of the groom on these solemn occasions. Filbert knows my weakness for old Walton, and although the box may have been directed  to Agnes, I shall claim it for my own. I much prefer it to the doilies.”

Now, although none of Brenda’s mistakes were, perhaps, very serious, there were enough of them to keep the family  in a state of mild excitement, and if Mrs. Barlow had had  her way, she would have forbidden her younger daughter  to have anything to do with any of the preparations for the  wedding. But Agnes’s wedding would indeed have been altogether extraordinary, if all preparations for it had proceeded with perfect smoothness. At the last moment, barely in time to rectify the mistake, she found that some