“How many yards are there in the piece?” Mrs. Owen asked. He told her and she made a rapid calculation. “I’ll take it all,” she said.
The man could not conceal his surprise. “We only sell seven yards for a grown person and four would do for her.”
“I know, but I am going to make two dresses for myself and she will need four. It is so much cheaper and stronger than any of the other wash materials that I shall make all her dresses out of the same piece. She won’t mind having them all alike, will you, Peggy?”
“I’ll like it; it’s so pretty.”
“Oh, please, mother, do make me one,” Alice begged.
“I’m afraid you will have to be contented with the ten dresses you already have,” said her mother. “For, as I will have six dresses to make for Peggy and two for myself, I think that will be all I can manage.”
“Perhaps one of my dolls can have a dress out of it,” Alice said hopefully.
“Yes, I’ll cut out a dress for Belle, and I can teach you to make that so you can be sewing on it while I am making Peggy’s frocks.”
But it was some time before Peggy began to wear them, for it took her mother a long time to make them. The very next afternoon, after the dinner dishes were washed, Mrs. Owen got out the blue material and she cut out a dress for Peggy, and then a small one for Belle. Alice was learning to hem and she took as careful stitches as a grown-up person. Peggy was divided between wanting to do what the others were doing and hating to be tied down. She made frequent trips to the kitchen for a drink of water and to see how Lady Jane was getting on.
“You can overcast these sleeves, Peggy,” her mother said later in the afternoon. “That is much easier than hemming.”