ls! girls!" cried Aunt Theresa; and we went to sleep.

Soon after we returned from our visit to the Bullers, Eleanor and I
resolved to prove the benefit we had reaped from Aunt Theresa's
instructions by making ourselves some dresses of an inexpensive stuff
that we bought for the purpose.

How well I remember the pattern! A flowering creeper, which followed a
light stem upwards through yard after yard of the material. We had
picked to pieces certain old bodies which fitted us fairly, and our
first work was to lay these patterns upon the new stuff, with weights on
them, and so to cut out our new bodies as easily as Matilda (whose
directions we were following) had prophesied that we should. When these
and the sleeves were accomplished (and they looked most business-like),
we began upon the skirts. We cut the back and the front breadths, and
duly "sloped" the latter. Then came the gores. We folded the breadths
into three parts; we took a third at one end, and two-thirds at the
other, and folded the slope accordingly. It became quite exciting.

"Who would have thought it was so easy?" said I.

Eleanor was almost prone upon the table, cutting the gores with large
scissors which made a thoroughly sempstress-like squeak.

"The higher education fades from my view with every snip," she said,
laughing. "Upon my word, Margery, I begin to believe this sort of thing
_is_ our vocation. It is great fun, and there is absolutely no brain
wear and tear."

The gores were parted as she spoke, and (to do us justice) were exactly
the shape of the tarlatan ones Aunt Theresa had cut. But when we came to
put them together, they wouldn't fit without turning one of them the
wrong side out. Eleanor had boasted too soon. We got headaches and
backaches with stooping and puzzling. We cut up all our stuff, but the
gores remained obstinate. By no ingenuity could we combine them so as to
be at once in proper order, the right side out, and the right side (of
the pattern) up. I really think we cried over them with weariness and
disappointment.

"Algebra's a trifle to it," was poor Eleanor's conclusion.

I went out to clear my brain by a walk, and happening, as I returned, to
meet Jack, I confided our woes to him. One could tell Jack anything.

"You've got it wrong somehow," said Jack, "linking" me. "Come to Miss
Lining's."

Miss Lining was our village dressmaker. A very bad one certainly, but
still she could gore a skirt. She was not a native of