Soon after we returned from our visit to the Bullers, Eleanor and I resolved to prove the benefit we had reaped from Aunt Theresa’s instructions by making ourselves some dresses of an inexpensive stuff that we bought for the purpose.
How well I remember the pattern! A flowering creeper, which followed a light stem upwards through yard after yard of the material. We had picked to pieces certain old bodies which fitted us fairly, and our first work was to lay these patterns upon the new stuff, with weights on them, and so to cut out our new bodies as easily as Matilda (whose directions we were following) had prophesied that we should. When these and the sleeves were accomplished (and they looked most business-like), we began upon the skirts. We cut the back and the front breadths, and duly “sloped” the latter. Then came the gores. We folded the breadths into three parts; we took a third at one end, and two-thirds at the other, and folded the slope accordingly. It became quite exciting.
“Who would have thought it was so easy?” said I.
Eleanor was almost prone upon the table, cutting the gores with large scissors which made a thoroughly sempstress-like squeak.
“The higher education fades from my view with every snip,” she said, laughing. “Upon my word, Margery, I begin to believe this sort of thing is our vocation. It is great fun, and there is absolutely no brain wear and tear.”
The gores were parted as she spoke, and (to do us justice) were exactly the shape of the tarlatan ones Aunt Theresa had cut. But when we came to put them together, they wouldn’t fit without turning one of them the wrong side out. Eleanor had boasted too soon. We got headaches and backaches with stooping and puzzling. We cut up all our stuff, but the gores remained obstinate. By no ingenuity could we combine them so as to be at once in proper order, the right side out, and the right side (of the pattern) up. I really think we cried over them with weariness and disappointment.
“Algebra’s a trifle to it,” was poor Eleanor’s conclusion.
I went out to clear my brain by a walk, and happening, as I returned, to meet Jack, I confided our woes to him. One could tell Jack anything.
“You’ve got it wrong somehow,” said Jack, “linking” me. “Come to Miss Lining’s.”
Miss Lining was our village dressmaker. A very bad one certainly, but still she could gore a skirt. She was not a native of the village, and signified her superior gentility by a mincing pronunciation. She had also a hiss with the sibilants peculiar to herself. Before I could remonstrate, Jack was knocking at the door.