rt, staying a week, looking over the
wardrobes of the whole family, advising, cutting, altering,
remaking, getting into ever so much household interest and history
in the daily chat, and listening over daily work: sitting at the
same table; linking herself in with things, spring and fall, as the
leaves do with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that
in March and September shut about us with friendly curtains of rain
for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room
with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of
scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our
dress-making week fell in with the equinoctial.

But now, all poor Miss Bree's "best places" had slipped away from
her, and her life had changed. People go to great outfitting stores,
buy their goods, have themselves measured, and leave the whole thing
to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything
fitted and machined and finished, with the last inventions and
accumulations of frills, tucks, and reduplications; and at the
bottom of the box a bill tucked and reduplicated in the same modern
proportions.

Miss Bree had now to go out, like any other machine girl, to the
warerooms; except when she took home particular hand-work of button
holes and trimmings, or occasionally engaged herself for two or
three days to some family mother who could not pay the big bills,
and who ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and
hired help for basting and finishing. She had almost done with even
this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles,
sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about.
Poor "Aunt Blin" overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room
before dinner, "Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the
house, she couldn't find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody
a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, instead of that
old callariper?"

Miss Bree behaved like a saint; it was not the lady's fault; she
resisted the temptation to a sudden headache and declining her
dinner, for fear of hurting the feelings of her employer, who had
always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid
that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old
hair, took off her glasses, wiped her eyes a little, washed her
hands, and went down when she was called; but after that day she
"left off going out to work for fam