Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

“Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Bryant. This will help me out a lot. I’ve just been thinking of a good many things I want to get and I wasn’t sure I ought to spare the money. Now I can get them right away. I’m to go to her at twelve o’clock and stay till after the dishes are washed. Which way did you say she lives?”

After most explicit directions had been given Joyce went back to her house and flew at the bundle of chintz with swift fingers. There was about three hours of daylight left—the evenings were long this time of year—and she must use every minute of them for she must have a thin dress to work in and she did not want to burn a light and show that she was staying nights in the place until she had things looking a little more comfortable, both because she did not want any one to offer her charity, and because she did not care to have them all know how poverty-stricken she really was.

She folded her material crosswise in the middle and spread it upon the driest place on her cleanly scrubbed floor. Then she laid her blue serge smoothly down upon it with the shoulders to the fold and the kimona sleeves stretched toward the selvages. The material reached below the serge far enough for a good hem, and guided by her serge dress she took her sharp, new scissors and carefully cut out a straight little simple slip of a dress.

She had cut many a dress before, on Aunt Mary’s big diningroom table with a box of shining pins and a tried and true pattern to guide her. But she knew the lines of a simple dress well enough and she could not see how she could go far astray in her cutting. It had to be long enough and wide enough for it was as big as her blue serge. So she clipped away, and soon had a dress cut out, making the neck line only a curved slit until she should try it on.

Then she sat down and ran up the two side seams on the right side and slipped it on to try it. Of course she had no mirror but she managed to get a vague glimpse of herself in the closed lattice of her window. It needed a little taking in under the arm, but the rest seemed all right, and she slipped it off again and sat down to make the changes and French the seams. Another trial and the fit was found to be better. She hunted out her pins and turned up the hem. This she found rather a hard proposition, but after several takings off and readjustings it seemed to swing evenly.

She was growing tired, and her back began to ache with sitting on the hard box after her day of scrubbing and curtain making. She wondered if she could keep at it much longer?

With a weary impulse she flung her paper bed out in the corner and threw herself down upon it.

For almost ten minutes she forced herself to lie and relax, trying to think of nothing and really rest. Then the clock on some distant building struck eight, and she roused up, suddenly aware that she had but a few more minutes of daylight and that if she lay here she would soon be asleep. She simply did not dare leave all that sewing till morning. She must have a neat, washable dress ready by twelve o’clock in which to work. So she stood up and tried to cut out the neck of her frock as best she could, wishing all the time for a big mirror. She finally got out the two-inch bit of glass belonging to her handbag and inspected her work, deciding it would have to do. Then she caught up a newspaper and cut and experimented until she had a pattern for a simple collar to fit the neck of her dress. This she cut from the half-yard of organdie, also cutting organdie cuffs to fit the short sleeves.

It was quite dusky now in her little room and she had to take the pieces of chintz that came off the sides of the dress out on her front step to see what she was doing. Here she cut from the longest piece a string belt, and several long strips of bias binding about an inch wide. Then rolling up these with the organdie collar and cuffs, her scissors, thimble, needle and thread, she put on her serge dress and hat and hurried down the street. She had thought of a way to work a little longer that night without burning a light. She would just sit in the station waiting room a little while and sew.

The soft evening breeze of the out-of-doors revived her weary body and she felt quite cheered and happy. To think, she was going to earn a whole ten dollars in one afternoon and evening! Here was her Father providing her with more money again just when she had discovered so many things she had to buy, that it overwhelmed her. The “barrel of meal and the cruse of oil” again! How wonderful it was!