And next day Miss Morrell entertained all the women of her working-party at the Deanery, and Sydney and the little cousin Sylvia helped to wait on them at tea and amuse them. Sydney quite made friends with a gentle-faced woman, whose smile made her think a little bit of mother’s, and sat beside her talking to her for a great part of the evening.
“Yes, this sewing-party it were Miss Morrell’s plan, miss,” said Mrs. Carter, “and many’s the times as we’ve blessed her for it. You see, miss, most of us here went out to service that early as we hadn’t time to learn more sewing than the roughest kind, and patterns and things of that kind don’t come much in the way of poor folk. Well, Miss Morrell she knew that, so she went and learned herself how to make gowns and underwear and children’s clothes and such-like, and then she has a working-party once a week for to learn us. And we sits in her own morning-room, with all her pretty things about, for all the world as if we was ladies, and she has the rolls of stuff down cheaper from the big shops than we can buy it, and lets us pay as we can. And she cuts out the things for us, and learns us all about the making of ’em, talking or reading to us in between, very sweet. And by-and-by we has tea; all served very dainty, with Mr. Tomkins, the footman, handing round as polite as anything. I can tell you, miss, it makes a real rest for us to sit and work in that there pretty room, and it makes a sight of difference, too, to the way that we dress the children. Why, mine was turned out as neat and nice as anything, though I say it as shouldn’t, all through last winter, and at half the cost of dressing ’em in them shop-made things, as comes all to pieces before you know where to have ’em. Miss Morrell, she don’t hardly let nothing interfere with our sewing-party. She’s a real young lady, she is, bless her!”
“Katharine,” said Sydney that evening, when the guests had departed, “I wish I were half as good as you are. Don’t you sometimes find that work-party a great bother?”
“Oh, of course it is a little inconvenient sometimes,” she said; “but the women are so nice and so grateful, and one is so glad to have something one can do for them oneself. Papa is always very good in letting me relieve special cases of trouble, but it is his money, not mine, you see. The best kind of giving is what one gives oneself, don’t you think? And most of us can give our time and trouble, even if we can give nothing else.”
Sydney took these words home with her next day, when reluctantly she had bade good-bye to Katharine, and been put by the silver-haired Dean into the charge of Miss Osric, who had come to Donisbro’ to fetch her.
“Most of us can give our time and trouble, even if we can give nothing else.”
CHAPTER XV
LITTLE THINGS
“Mrs. Sawyer says she will be proud and pleased to let us use her kitchen for nothing,” Sydney said, “but we must pay her for the fire. She doesn’t have one in the afternoons, as a rule. How much does a fire cost, Miss Osric?”