"You can't do it," said Bessie. "Even at the stores where they profess to furnish costumes at twenty-four hours' notice, they would not agree to give you, in so short a time, a dress for which they can use no ordinary pattern. Amy,"—with what seemed to be a most irrelevant change of subject,—"is any one coming to your house to dinner to-night?"
"Cousin Serena, and yourself if you will," I answered.
"Yes, I intended to suggest that you should invite me," answered Bessie, "and, had you proved obdurate, should have appealed to Milly or your mother. Well, there will be four of us: yourself, cousin Serena, Milly, and myself; and we will press the mother and Mrs. Rutherford into the service. Let us go to Arnold's, buy some suitable material,—and we all know what cousin Serena is with scissors and thimble,—coax her to cut out a dress for Matty, and we will all devote the evening, perhaps the whole night, to it. By our united exertions, I think that we can surely accomplish it in time for you to take it to her to-morrow, and your credit will be saved."
"If we were not in the street, I should fall upon you with kisses and tears of gratitude," I answered ecstatically; "as it is, consider yourself embraced.—Cousin Serena, will you help us?"
There was no question of that: cousin Serena was only too glad to give us her services; and although, as I have said, she needed to be guided and tyrannized over in the matter of style and fashion where her own dress was concerned, she was an expert in fashioning garments for the poor.
Bessie's idea was acted upon forthwith. We took our way down to Arnold's, purchased the necessary material, and, lest it should not be sent home in time, bid pride hide its head, and carried the parcels ourselves.
Jim beamed upon us when he gathered, from the conversation around the dinner-table, to what the evening was to be devoted, and became quite an overpowering nuisance with his pressing attentions to the young ladies.
The dress was so nearly completed that night that Milly and I had but little difficulty in finishing it for the next afternoon.
Father and mother gave consent to my pursuing my benevolent intentions with regard to Matty, so far as I could do it without venturing into the abode of her wretched parents, but positively forbade my going there even under the guidance and protection of cousin Serena. Indeed, the fear of them which Tony and Matty showed augured little good or encouragement for those who would benefit these children, unless some profit therefrom, was to accrue to the elder Blairs themselves.
The dress was ready in good time, and supplemented by the addition of a warm sack of the same color from mother and a little cloth cap from aunt Emily. A hood had been in the thoughts of the latter, as warmer and more suitable; but I had begged for the cap as affording better opportunity for the display of Matty's hair. "Poor little object!" I pleaded: "why not allow her the gratification of this small vanity?" and aunt Emily yielded, as she was sure to do when any one's small whims and fancies were to be satisfied.