“Good-afternoon, Miss Lining. Miss Margery has been making a dress, and she’s got into a muddle with the gores. Now, how do you manage with gores, Miss Lining?” Jack confidentially inquired, taking his hat off, and accepting a well-dusted chair.
There was now nothing for it but to explain my difficulties, which I did, Miss Lining saying, “Yisss, misss,” at every two or three words. When I had said my say, she sucked the top of her brass thimble thoughtfully for some moments, and then spoke as an oracle.
“There’s a hinside and a hout to the stuff? Yisss, misss. And a hup and a down? Yisss, misss.”
“And quite half the gores won’t fit in anywhere,” I desperately interposed.
Miss Lining took another taste of the brass thimble, and then said:
“In course, misss, with a patterned thing there’s as many gores to throw hout as to huse. Yisss, misss.”
“Are there?” said I. “But what a waste!”
“Ho no, misss! you cuts the body out of the gores you throws hout, misss——”
“Well, if you get the body out of them, there must be a waist!” Jack broke in, as he sat fondling Miss Lining’s tom-cat.
“Ho no, sir!” said Miss Lining, who couldn’t have seen a joke to save her dignity. “They cuts to good add-vantage, sir.”