A DAY OF DISTRESS. 189 



ing. I think there were seventeen pincushions of different patterns 

 beginning with an old boot and ending with a new guitar. But 

 what was there not? It seemed to me that there were pocketable 

 commodities enough to furnish asecond-hand bazaar ! Every thing was 

 there except my keys. For four hours did I and my luckless 

 maidens perambulate the house, whilst John, the boy, examined the 

 garden ; until we were all so tired that we were forced to sit down 

 from mere weariness. Saving always the first night of one of my 

 own tragedies, when, though I pique myself on being composed, I 

 can never manage to sit still ; except on such an occasion, I do not 

 think I ever walked so much at one time in my life. At last I 

 flung myself on a sofa in the green-house, and began to revolve the 

 possibility of their being still in the place where I had first missed them. 



A jingle in my apron-pocket afforded some hope, but it turned 

 out to be only the clinking of a pair of garden-scissors against his 

 old companion, a silver pencil-case and that prospect faded away. 

 A slight opening of Dryden's heavily-bound volume gave another 

 glimmer of sunshine, but it proved to be occasioned by a sprig of 

 myrtle in Palemori and Arcite Kate Leslie's elegant mark. 



This circumstance recalls the recollection of my pretty friend. 

 Could she have been the culprit ? And I began to ponder over all 

 the instances of unconscious key-stealing that I had heard of among 

 my acquaintances. How my old friend, Aunt Martha, had been so 

 well known for that propensity, as to be regularly sought after wheix 

 keys were missing ; and my young friend, Edward Harley, from the 

 habit of twisting something round his fingers during his eloquent 

 talk (people used to provide another eloquent talker, Madame de 

 Stael, with a willow-twig for that purpose), had once caught up and 

 carried away a key, also a Bramah, belonging to a lawyer's bureau, 

 thereby, as the lawyer affirmed, causing the loss of divers lawsuits 

 to himself and his clients. Neither Aunt Martha nor Edward had 

 been near the place ; but Kate Leslie might be equally subject to 

 absent fits, and might, in a paroxysm, have abstracted my keys ; at 

 all events it was worth trying. So I wrote her a note to go by post 

 in the evening (for Kate, 1 grieve to say, lives about twenty miles 

 off) and determined to await her reply, and think no more of my 

 calamity. 



A wise resolution ; but, like many other wise resolves, easier 

 made than kept. Even if I could have forgotten my loss, my own 

 household would not have let me. 



The cook, with professional callousness, came to demand sugar 

 for the currant-pudding and the sugar was in the store-room and 

 the store-room was locked ; and scarcely had I recovered from this 

 shock before Anne came to inform me that there was no oil in the 

 cruet, and that the flask was in the cellar, snugly reposing, I suppose, 

 by the side of the Schiedam, so that if for weariness I could have 

 eaten, there was no dinner to eat for without the salad who would 

 take the meat ? However, I being alone, this signified little ; much 

 less than a circumstance of which I was reminded by my note to 



