the village, and
signified her superior gentility by a mincing pronunciation. She had
also a hiss with the sibilants peculiar to herself. Before I could
remonstrate, Jack was knocking at the door.

"Good-afternoon, Miss Lining. Miss Margery has been making a dress, and
she's got into a muddle with the gores. Now, how do you manage with
gores, Miss Lining?" Jack confidentially inquired, taking his hat off,
and accepting a well-dusted chair.

There was now nothing for it but to explain my difficulties, which I
did, Miss Lining saying, "Yisss, misss," at every two or three words.
When I had said my say, she sucked the top of her brass thimble
thoughtfully for some moments, and then spoke as an oracle.

"There's a hinside and a hout to the stuff? Yisss, misss. And a hup and
a down? Yisss, misss."

"And quite half the gores won't fit in anywhere," I desperately
interposed.

Miss Lining took another taste of the brass thimble, and then said:

"In course, misss, with a patterned thing there's as many gores to throw
hout as to huse. Yisss, misss."

"_Are there?_" said I. "But what a waste!"

"Ho no, misss! you cuts the body out of the gores you throws hout,
misss----"

"Well, if you get the body out of them, there must be a waist!" Jack
broke in, as he sat fondling Miss Lining's tom-cat.

"Ho no, sir!" said Miss Lining, who couldn't have seen a joke to save
her dignity. "They cuts to good add-vantage, sir."

The mystery was now clear to me, and Jack saw this by my face.

"You understand?" said he briefly, setting down the cat.

"Quite," said I. "Our mistake was beginning with the bodies. But we can
get some more stuff."

"An odd bit always comes in," said Miss Lining, speaking, I fear, from
an experience of bits saved from the dresses of village patrons. "Yisss,
misss."

"Well, good-afternoon, Miss Lining," said Jack, who never suffered, as
Eleanor and I sometimes did, from a difficulty in getting away from a
cottage. "Thank you very much. Have you heard from your sister at Buxton
lately?"

"Last week, sir," said Miss Lining.

"And how is she?" said Jack urbanely.

He never forgot any one, and he never grudged sympathy--two qualities
which made him beloved of the village.

"Quite well, thank you, sir, and the same to you," said Miss Lining,
beaming; "except that she do suffer a deal in her inside, sir."

"Chamomile tea is very good for the inside, I believe," said Jack,
putting on his hat with perfec