“It was very provoking that seamstresses and such people would get
married, like the rest of the world,” Mrs. Greenough said, half in fun
and half in earnest. Her fall sewing was just coming on, and here was
Lizzie Brown, who had suited her so nicely, going off to be married;
and she had no resource but to advertise, and take whomsoever she could
get. No less than ten women had been there that day, and not one would
answer.
“There comes Number Eleven; you will see,” she cried, as the bell rang.
Kitty Greenough looked on with interest. Indeed, it was her gowns,
rather than her mother’s, that were most pressing. She was just
sixteen, and since last winter she had shot up suddenly, as girls at
that age so often do, and left all her clothes behind her.
Mrs. Greenough was right,--it _was_ another seamstress; and Bridget
showed in a plain, sad-looking woman of about forty, with an air of
intense respectability. Mrs. Greenough explained what she wanted done,
and the woman said quietly that she was accustomed to such work,--would
Mrs. Greenough be so kind as to look at some recommendations? Whereupon
she handed out several lady-like looking notes, whose writers indorsed
the bearer, Mrs. Margaret Graham, as faithful and capable, used to
trimmings of all sorts, and quick to catch an idea.
“Very well indeed,” Mrs. Greenough said, as she finished reading them;
“I could ask nothing better. Can you be ready to come at once?”
“To-morrow, if you wish, madam,” was the answer; and then Mrs. Graham
went away.
Kitty Greenough was an impulsive, imaginative girl; no subject was too
dull or too unpromising for her fancy to touch it. She made a story
for herself about every new person who came in her way. After Number
Eleven had gone down the stairs, Kitty laughed.
“Isn’t she a sobersides, mamma? I don’t believe there’ll be any frisk
in my dresses at all if she trims them.”
“There’ll be frisk enough in them if you wear them,” her mother
answered, smiling at the bright, saucy, winsome face of her one tall
daughter.
Kitty was ready to turn the conversation.
“What do you think she is, mamma,--wife or widow?” And then answering
her own question: “I think she’s married, and he’s sick, and she has to
take care of him. That solemn, still way she has comes of much staying
in a sick-room. She’s in the habit of keeping quiet, don’t you see? I
wish she were a little prettier; I think he would get well quicker.”
“There’d be no plain, quiet people in your world if you made one,” her
mother said, smiling; “but you’d make a mistake to leave them out. You
would get tired even of the sun if it shone all the time.”
The next day the new seamstress came, and a thoroughly good one she
proved; “better even than Lizzie,” Mrs. Greenough said, and this was
high praise. She sewed steadily, and never opened her lips except to
ask some question about her work. Even Kitty, who used to boast that
she could make a dumb man talk, had not audacity enough to intrude on
the reserve in which Mrs. Graham intrenched herself.
“_He’s_ worse this morning,” whispered saucy Kitty to her mother; “and
she can do nothing but think about him and mind her gathers.”
But, by the same token, “_he_” must have been worse every day, for
during the two weeks she sewed there Mrs. Graham never spoke of any
thing beyond her work.