would be wanted for the trimming of her own and
Jessie's spring dresses.

Miss Lee was gone up to the house for a grand measuring of all the
children for their new frocks; but Amy began to calculate and ask
questions about the width and number of rows, and Jessie presently
said--

"After all, I think mine will look very well without any round the
skirt."

"Why, Jessie, I thought you said the dress you saw looked so genteel
with the three rows----"

"Yes," said Jessie; "but I have thought since--" and she hesitated and
blushed.

Amy got up from the machine, came towards her, and, laying her hand on
her, said, gently--

"I know, Jessie."

"And I know, though you wanted to keep it a secret!" cried Florence. "I
was at church too last night!"

"Oh, yes, I saw you, Florence; and wasn't it beautiful?" said Amy,
earnestly.

"Most lovely! It is worth something to have a stranger here sometimes to
get a fresh hint from!" said Florence.

"I call that more than a hint," said Jessie, in a low voice. "I am so
glad you felt it as I did, Flossy."

"Felt it! You don't mean that you got hold of it? Then you can tell
whether it was cut on the bias, and how the little puffs were put on!"

"Why, what are you thinking of, Flossy?" exclaimed Amy. "Bias--puffs!
One would think you were talking of a dress!"

"Well, of course I was. Of that lovely self-trimming on that cashmere
dress of the lady that came with Miss Manners. What--what are you
laughing at, Grace?"

"Oh! Florence," said Amy, in a disappointed tone; "we thought you meant
the sermon."

"The sermon?" said Florence, half annoyed, half puzzled; "well, it was
a very good one; but----"

"It did make one feel--oh, I don't know how!" said Jessie, much too
eager to share her feelings with the other girls, even to perceive that
Florence wanted to go off to the trimming.

"Wasn't it beautiful--most beautiful--when he said it was not enough
only just not to be weeds, or to be only flowers, gay and lovely to the
eye?" said Amy.

"Yes," went on Jessie; "he said that we might see there were some
flowers just for beauty, all double, and with no fruit or good at all in
them, but dying off into a foul mass of decay."

"Ay," said Grace; "I thought of your dahlias, that, what with the rain
and the frost, were--pah!--the nastiest mess at last."

"Then he said," proceeded Jessie, "that there were some fair and comely,
some not, but only bringing forth just their own seeds, n