Jane, with Martha helping, had spent days in its preparation.

White dimity curtains starched stiff as a petticoat had been hung at the windows; a new lace cover spread on the little mahogany, brass-mounted dressing-table--her great grandmother's, in fact--with its tiny swinging mirror and the two drawers (Martha remembered when her bairn was just high enough to look into the mirror), and pots of fresh flowers placed on the long table on which her hooks used to rest.

Two easy-chairs had also been brought up from the sitting-room below, covered with new chintz and tied with blue ribbons, and, more wonderful still, a candle-box had been covered with cretonne and studded with brass tacks by the aid of Martha's stiff fingers that her bairn might have a place in which to put her dainty shoes and slippers.
When the trunks had been carried upstairs and Martha with her own hands had opened my lady's gorgeous blue morocco dressing-case with its bottles capped with gold and its brushes and fittings emblazoned with cupids swinging in garlands of roses, the poor woman's astonishment knew no bounds.

The many scents and perfumes, the dainty boxes, big and little, holding various powders--one a red paste which the old nurse thought must be a salve, but about which, it is needless to say, she was greatly mistaken--as well as a rabbit's foot smirched with rouge (this she determined to wash at once), and a tiny box of court-plaster cut in half moons.

So many things, in fact, did the dear old nurse pull from this wonderful bag that the modest little bureau could not hold half of them, and the big table had to be brought up and swept of its plants and belongings.
The various cosmetics and their uses were especial objects of comment.
"Did ye break one of the bottles, darlin' ?" she asked, sniffing at a peculiar perfume which seemed to permeate everything.