"I should be delighted," said Hildegarde, laughing. "I learned all I know from my mother. She is clever, if you will. I cannot compare with her in skill. Yet I was once offered a position as assistant to a milliner. These things underneath are things we have worn, but they are all good."
"This has never been worn!" exclaimed Bell, lifting a pretty gray silk blouse, trimmed with knots of cherry-coloured ribbon. "This is just out of the box, Hildegarde. Oh, what a pretty, dainty thing!"
Hildegarde laughed. "I am proud of that!" she said. "I made that out of an old underskirt of Mamma's. Yes, I did!" as the girls exclaimed with one accord. "It was good silk to begin with, you see. I washed it, and pressed it, and made it up on the other side; and it really does look very nice, I think. The ribbon is some that Mamma had had put away ever since the last time they wore cherry colour,—twenty-five years, she says. Lovely ribbon! Well, and I knew that Mary, the daughter, is just my age, so I had to 'run for luck,' and make it to fit me. I do hope she will like it!"
"Like it!" exclaimed Bell. "If she does not like it, she deserves to wear brown gingham all her life. It is as pretty a blouse as I ever saw."
"What is the matter with brown gingham?" asked Hildegarde. "One of my pet dresses, a year or two, was a brown gingham."
"Oh, but not like our brown gingham!" said Bell. "You see—well, it is treasonable, I know, Gerty, but Hildegarde is almost like ourselves. You see, our blessed Mammy (this was long ago, when Toots was a baby, and the boys still in kilts) got tired of all our clothes, and felt as if she could not bear to think about them for a while. So she got a whole piece of brown check gingham,—forty mortal yards,—and had it all made up into clothes for us. Oh, dear! Shall I ever forget those clothes? It was a small check, rather coarse, stout gingham, because she thought that would wear better than the Scotch. It did! I had four frocks of it, and the boys each had three kilt suits, and even the baby wore brown slips. You cannot remember it, Toots?"
Gertrude shook her head.
"I remember the effect on the family mind," she said, laughing.
"Yes," said Bell. "I don't know whether you have ever noticed, Hildegarde, that none of us ever wear brown? Well, we never do! Pater will never see it. He did not realise for some time what had been done. But one day,—oh, you ought to hear the Mammy tell about this! I can't begin to make it as funny as she does. One day he came home, and the twinnies were playing in the front yard. He stood and looked at them for a while.
"'Are you making mud pies, boys?'