S--MISS LINING--THE
'PARISHIONER'S PENNYWORTH.'

The Bullers came home again. Colonel St. Quentin had retired, and when
Major Buller got the regiment, he also left the army and settled in a
pleasant neighbourhood in the south of England. As soon as Aunt Theresa
was fairly established in her new house she sent for Eleanor and me.
There was no idea of my remaining permanently. It was only a visit.

The Major (but he was a colonel now) and his wife were very little
changed. The girls, of course, had altered greatly, and so had I.
Matilda was a fashionably-dressed young lady, with a slightly frail
appearance at times, as if Nature were still revenging the old
mismanagement and neglect.

It did not need Aunt Theresa to tell us that she was her father's
favourite daughter. But it was no capricious favouritism, I am sure. I
believe Colonel Buller to have been one of those people whose hearts
have depths of tenderness that are never sounded. The Bush House
catastrophe had long ago been swept into the lumber-room of Aunt
Theresa's memory, but the tender self-reproach of Matilda's father was
still to be seen in all his care and indulgence of her.

"He'll take me anywhere," said Matilda, with affectionate pride. "He
even goes shopping with me."

We liked Matilda by far the best of the girls. Partly, no doubt, because
she was our old friend, but partly, I think, because intimacy with her
father had developed the qualities she inherited from him, and softened
others.

To our great satisfaction we discovered that gores were no enigma to
Matilda, and she and Aunt Theresa good-naturedly undertook to initiate
us into the mysteries of dressmaking.

There was an excellent opportunity. Eleanor was now eighteen, and
Matilda seventeen years old. Matilda was to "come out" at a county ball
that was to take place whilst we were with the Bullers, and Mrs.
Arkwright consented to let Eleanor go also. Hence ball dresses, and
hence also our opportunity for learning how to make them. For they were
to be made by a dressmaker in the house, and she did not reject our
assistance.

The Bullers' drawing-room was divided by folding-doors, and both
divisions now overflowed with tarlatan and trimmings; but at every fresh
inroad of callers (and they were hardly less frequent than of old) we
young ones, and yards of flounces and finery with us, were swept by Aunt
Theresa into the back drawing-room, like autumn leaves before a breeze.

The dresses