o her from Paris? and did not Miss
Prissy work three days and nights on that dress, and make every stitch
of that trimming over with her own hands, before it was fit to be seen?
And when Mrs. Governor Dexter's best silver-gray brocade was spoiled by
Miss Pimlico, and there wasn't another scrap to pattern it with, didn't
she make a new waist out of the cape and piece one of the sleeves
twenty-nine times, and yet nobody would ever have known that there was a
joining in it?

In fact, though Miss Prissy enjoyed the fair average plain-sailing of
her work, she might be said to _revel_ in difficulties. A full pattern
with trimming, all ample and ready, awoke a moderate enjoyment; but the
resurrection of anything half-worn or imperfectly made, the brilliant
success, when, after turning, twisting, piecing, contriving, and,
by unheard-of inventions of trimming, a dress faded and defaced was
restored to more than pristine splendor,--_that_ was a triumph worth
enjoying.

It was true, Miss Prissy, like most of her nomadic compeers, was a
little given to gossip; but, after all, it was innocent gossip,--not
a bit of malice in it; it was only all the particulars about Mrs.
Thus-and-So's wardrobe,--all the statistics of Mrs. That-and-T'other's
china-closet,--all the minute items of Miss Simpkins's wedding-clothes,
--and how her mother cried, the morning of the wedding, and said
that she didn't know anything how she could spare Louisa Jane, only
that Edward was such a good boy that she felt she could love him
like an own son,--and what a providence it seemed that the very ring
that was put into the bride-loaf was one that he gave her when he first
went to sea, when she wouldn't be engaged to him because she thought she
loved Thomas Strickland better, but that was only because she hadn't
found him out, you know,--and so forth, and so forth. Sometimes, too,
her narrations assumed a solemn cast, and brought to mind the hush of
funerals, and told of words spoken in faint whispers, when hands were
clasped for the last time,--and of utterances crushed out from hearts,
when the hammer of a great sorrow strikes out sparks of the divine, even
from common stone; and there would be real tears in the little blue
eyes, and the pink bows would flutter tremulously, like the last
three leaves on a bare scarlet maple in autumn. In fact, dear reader,
_gossip_, like romance, has its noble side to it. How can you love your
neighbor as yourself and not fee