Leslie had made for her a
small hoop from the upper half of one of her own, and laced a little
cover upon it, of striped seersucker, of which there was a petticoat
also to wear above. These, clear, clean, and stiffened, came from Miss
Craydocke's stores. She never traveled without her charity-trunk,
wherein, put at once in perfect readiness for different use the moment
they passed beyond her own, she kept all spare material that waited for
such call. Breadths of old dresses, ripped and sponged and pressed, or
starched, ironed, and folded; flannel petticoats shrunken short;
stockings "cut down" in the old, thrifty, grandmother fashion;
underclothing strongly patched (as she said, "the Lord's mark put upon
it, since it had pleased Him to give her the means to do without
patches"); odds and ends of bonnet-ribbons, dipped in spirits and rolled
tightly upon blocks, from which they unrolled nearly as good as
new,--all these things, and more, religiously made the most of for
whomsoever they might first benefit, went about with her in this, the
biggest of her boxes, which, give out from it as she might, she never
seemed, she said, to get quite to the bottom of.
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