"Momsey, dear," she began, "there is one more thing, just one more I promise you. Ted says we've got to have sofa pillows. I suppose we could have a few made of excelsior, but it would be too cheap and common to have them all stuffed with that, but I don't know where in the world we are to get feathers unless we have goose for dinner every day till it's time for me to go."
"And what good would that do?" asked her mother. "As if you could use green feathers."
"Oh, dear, I never thought of that; they would have to be cured first, wouldn't they?" Janet sat down on a low chair and gazed absently at the pile of gingham breadths upon the floor beside her.
The seamstress, a thin flat-faced person with wisps of dun-colored hair sticking out from the careless twist at the back of her head, stopped to bite off her basting thread before she said: "The sleeves are all ready for the machine, Miss Janet. Will you take them?"
"Oh, I suppose so, Miss Rosy, though pillows are on my mind at present, and I may not stitch these evenly. If any one were to ask me just now which weighed the most, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead, I should say feathers; they weigh me down heavily enough."
Miss Roxy paused in her swift movements, needle in mid-air. "Your Aunt Minerva Gilpin has two or three feather beds," she said.
"But I don't want feather beds, you see," said Janet, turning half-way around and stopping the busy wheel of the machine. "It is pillows I want."
"There'd be enough in one of her beds to make all the pillows you'd want for a month of Sundays," returned Miss Roxy. "It's a job to be sure, but everybody except the old-fashioned folks like Miss Minerva is using up their feather beds that way. I've made over at least a dozen this last year."
"Then you could make over one for me, couldn't you? Good! I'll descend upon Aunt Minerva this very afternoon. It's the least she can do for the credit of the family to present me with a feather bed. I'll have to skirmish around for covers though. Here, Miss Roxy, take these; my interest in gingham frocks has completely vanished, and I am going to hunt through the piece bags for possible pillow covers."
She dropped the sleeves into Miss Roxy's lap and went gaily from the room to pull over the bags in the attic and to come down half an hour later with pieces bright and dull which might be converted into covers for her sofa pillows.