“Mercy! Goodness me! Don’t sit there!” cried Miss Sarah Ramsey, Tom’s maiden aunt, who was called “Sallie” by Tom and by his mother. “Look out, Thomas!”
“Why? What’s the matter? Is there a pin or a needle in it?” asked Tom, as he paused and looked apprehensively at the chair, which contained some fluffy white material.
“Needle! Pin! Why, Thomas Jefferson Baldwin! That’s the ruching for the neck of Mrs. Anderson’s new dress, and if you had sat on that, and crushed it, I don’t know what I’d have done,” and Aunt Sallie became positively pale over the thought.
Tom knew she had been much wrought up over the threatened calamity, for she never gave him his full name—Thomas Jefferson Baldwin—unless she was very serious indeed.
“Huh!” exclaimed the boy. “I didn’t think that bunch of white stuff was anything.”
“There, Tom, I’ll take it out of the way,” said his mother. “Now you can sit down and tell us all about it.”
“Yes, and try and be quiet about it,” cautioned his aunt. “When you talk so loud you make my head ache, and my nerves are all unstrung now with trying to get the sleeves in this waist. I never saw such styles as they wear now-a-days.”
“Have you really got work, Tom?” asked Mrs. Baldwin.
“Yes, mother, and a good job, too.”
“Where is it?”