'Sewing-machines can work. What the use of fussing about it!'

'They can't mend,' said Mysie. 'Besides, do you know, in the American
war, all the sewing-machines in the Southern States got out of order,
and as all the machinery people were in the north, the poor ladies
didn't know what to do, and couldn't work without them.'

'Sewing-machines are a recent invention,' said Dolores.

'Oh! you didn't think I meant the great old War of Independence. No, I
meant the war about the slaves--secession they called it.'

'That is not in the history of England,' said Dolores, as if Mysie had
no business to look beyond.

'Why! of course not, when it happened in America. Papa told us about
it. He read it in some paper, I think. Don't you like learning things
in that way?'

'No. I don't approve of irregular unsystematic knowledge.'

Dolores has heard her mother say something of this kind, and it came
into her head most opportunely as a defence of her father--for she
would not for the world have confessed that he did not talk to her as
Sir Jasper Merrifield seemed to have done to his children. In fact she
rather despised the General for so doing.

'Oh! but it is such fun picking up things out of lesson time!' said
Mysie.