thing."

"But with all the ripping and remodelling, I don't get time to turn
round, myself, and _live_! It is all fall work, and spring work, and
summer work and winter work. One drive rushes pell-mell right over
another. There isn't time enough to make things and have them; the
good of them, I mean."

"The girls get it; we have to live in our children," said Mrs.
Megilp, self-renouncingly. "I can never rest until Glossy is
provided with everything; and you know, Laura, I _am_ obliged to
contrive."

Mrs. Megilp and her daughter Glaucia spent about a thousand dollars
a year, between them, on their dress. In these days, this is a
limited allowance--for the Megilps. But Mrs. Megilp was a woman of
strict pecuniary principle; the other fifteen hundred must pay all
the rest; she submitted cheerfully to the Divine allotment, and
punctually made the two ends meet. She will have this to show, when
the Lord of these servants cometh and reckoneth with them, and that
man who has been also in narrow circumstances, brings his nicely
kept talent out of his napkin.

Desire Ledwith, a girl of sixteen, spoke suddenly from a corner
where she sat with a book,--

"I do wonder who '_they_' are, mamma!"

"Who?" said Mrs. Ledwith, half rising from her chair, and letting
some breadths of silk slide down upon the floor from her lap, as she
glanced anxiously from the window down the avenue. She did not want
any company this morning.

"Not that, mamma; I don't mean anybody coming. The 'theys' that
wear, and don't wear, things; the theys you have to be just like,
and keep ripping and piecing for."

"You absurd child!" exclaimed Mrs. Ledwith, pettishly. "To make me
spill a whole lapful of work for that! They? Why, everybody, of
course."

"Everybody complains of them, though. Jean Friske says her mother is
all discouraged and worn out. There isn't a thing they had last year
that won't have to be made over this, because they put in a breadth
more behind, and they only gore side seams. And they don't wear
black capes or cloth sacks any more with all kinds of dresses; you
must have suits, clear through. It seems to me 'they' is a nuisance.
And if it's everybody, we must be part, of it. Why doesn't somebody
stop?"

"Desire, I wish you'd put away your book, and help, instead of
asking silly questions. You can't make the world over, with 'why
don'ts?'"

"I'll _rip_," said Desire, with a slight emphasis; putting her book
down, and coming o