THE BRIDAL GIFT

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1926, Page 18

THE BRIDAL GIFT

(By Carol Emerson). I had never seen' tuck a trousseau! Bidden to a private view of Noreen’s ; “pretties” some weeks before the Great Day, I had welcomed the privilege thus accorded an old friend. I could make mental notes; and discover what form my own little bridal gift take without duplicating existing items. I knew that for months past there had been feverish activity among Noreen’s hosts of chums, more skilled with the needle than I! and

that contributions to the famoujs | trousseau had been pouring in. And as I gazed at the piles of lingerie, mandarin rest-coats, and delectable ■ satin mules, I realised that any j further item of a like nature was “off.” There simply wasn’t a thing forgotten. Knowing Noreen’s love of beautiful wearing apparel, all had concentrated on gifts sartorial. The lovely little bride-to-be was. a bit of a problem. She has always been engagingly candid about her passion for clothes; and adores beauty of line and texture more than anything in the world. A bit of Beauty she must have. Some material, perhaps, of out-of-the-ordinary attire, that her own clever fingers could shape to shining loveliness ? I went shopping the next day. In; stinctively, from old habit, I halted, before a bookshop. My eye fell on a perfect de-luxe edition in vellum; to fame-laurelled volumes bound in rich, dark purple, lettered and fledged with delicate gold. Poetry, clad in poetic harmony. Books? For Norecn? After all, why not; They had their own beauty. Norecn •would not be insensitive to that velvety texture; nor, surely, to the rarer beauties within. Norecn would find room for the bit of vellum among the ben of shimmering vanities. My matter-of-fact husband made me feel perfectly miserable when I arrived, home . with my purchase. Called me selfish, too, and almost rduced me to

tears. ‘‘Just the sort of thing a woman always does,” he announced with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘’Buys something she’s dying to possess herself!” Miserable misgivings assailed mo as 1 despatched those purple volumes

A day or two later I had a note from the bride-to-be. A pathetic little note, too intimate for complete quotation. But its leit-motif was contained in one illuminating sentence that 1 read aloud to my cynic spouse: ‘’Thank you, my dear, for the one gift that gives me a place among intelligent people!”