"It is all we have at present," Mrs. Harris answered.
"Do the girls in the neighborhood, the grown girls, learn it?"
"No; they all work, and have only their evenings."
"Why don't you have an evening class?"
"We have thought of that, but it is hard to get a girl like Daphne to come down in the evening."
Drusilla watched Daphne frowning over the intricacies of the pattern.
"Now I think it is nice of Daphne," she said, "to want to come here and help them girls learn to sew; but it seems to me that she'd be doin' a good deal more good to the girls if she hired a woman, some one who needed the work and knowed dressmaking, to come and really learn the girls to make their dresses. Learn 'em from the start, from cuttin' out the cloth to sewin' up the seams and makin' the last buttonhole. Them girls don't want to learn how to make them big pants and that shirt; they want to make their clothes—something pretty they can wear. I think a lot of Daphne, but she'd be doin' more good if she hired some one who knowed her business instead of tryin' to do somethin' she don't know nothin' about. Quite likely it does her good, but so far as I can see it don't do the girls much good."
The head worker flushed, as did Daphne.
"We like to interest the girls from homes like Miss Thornton's to come down and help the people less fortunate than themselves."
"Yes, that's good too; interest them. I saw Daphne pay five dollars for a box of candy the other day, and it's bad for her complexion. Instead of buying them things let her hire some one, I say. She can come just the same, but let a dressmaker or a sewing woman learn 'em to sew; not a girl who ain't even sewed a button on her own clothes or made a pocket handkerchief. And then she'd be helpin' the dressmaker too, who might need the money. If you had some sensible sewing learnt you might git some of the girls who work days to come in evenings and learn, but no girl is goin' to waste her time fiddlin' around with things like that, that they ain't goin' to use, or don't have no need of."