or
concealed by some new fashion of trimming falling with generous
appropriateness exactly across the fatal weak point. She can tell you
whether that remnant of velvet will make you a basque,--whether Mamma's
old silk can reappear in juvenile grace for Miss Lucy. What marvels
follow her, wherever she goes! What wonderful results does she contrive
from the most unlikely materials, as everybody after her departure
wonders to see old things become so much better than new!

Among the most influential and happy of her class was Miss Prissy
Diamond,--a little, dapper, doll-like body, quick in her motions and
nimble in her tongue, whose delicate complexion, flaxen curls, merry
flow of spirits, and ready abundance of gayety, song, and story, apart
from her professional accomplishments, made her a welcome guest in every
family in the neighborhood. Miss Prissy laughingly boasted being past
forty, sure that the avowal would always draw down on her quite a storm
of compliments, on the freshness of her sweet-pea complexion and the
brightness of her merry blue eyes. She was well pleased to hear dawning
girls wondering why with so many advantages she had never married. At
such remarks, Miss Prissy always laughed loudly, and declared that she
had always had such a string of engagements with the women that she
never found half an hour to listen to what any _man_ living would say to
her, supposing she could stop to hear him. "Besides, if I were to get
married, nobody else could," she would say. "What would become of all
the wedding-clothes for everybody else?" But sometimes, when Miss Prissy
felt extremely gracious, she would draw out of her little chest just the
faintest tip-end of a sigh, and tell some young lady, in a confidential
undertone, that one of these days she would tell her something,--and
then there would come a wink of her blue eyes and a fluttering of the
pink ribbons in her cap quite stimulating to youthful inquisitiveness,
though we have never been able to learn by any of our antiquarian
researches that the expectations thus excited were ever gratified.

In her professional prowess she felt a pardonable pride. What feats
could she relate of wonderful dresses got out of impossibly small
patterns of silk! what marvels of silks turned that could not be told
from new! what reclaimings of waists that other dress-makers had
hopelessly spoiled! Had not Mrs. General Wilcox once been obliged to
call in her aid on a dress sent t