"Not understand sewing machines!" shrilled the kimonoed one, "why anybody with any sense at all can run a sewing machine—"
Felicia smiled her wide ingenuous smile.
"I am not any one at all—but it so happens that I cannot use a sewing machine. Perhaps I can please you with my needle. Or, I can go home." "You can't do anything of the kind. It's the maid's day out and I have to go to a matinee and I'd counted on you to watch the children—" she shook her head in exasperation. "Well, take off your hat, don't stand there gawping. I suppose I'll have to put up with it. Do you know enough to sew on buttons and mend stockings?"
Felicia looked at her curiously for a moment. She couldn't think of any flower or any vegetable that this strange creature was like, or any weed for that matter, and it's very hard to keep the garden of a day in order when strange unexpected things spring up in it. She took off her hat and her dripping coat. She seated herself in the silly chair and began to make something like order out of the mess of crumpled things before her.
Somehow or other the dreadful day limped along. The children howled while they were dressed. Their mother by turns nagged or cajoled them from one crying spell into another. The frowsy maid pulled the covers untidily over the two little beds and half-heartedly picked up a few of the toys and dumped them in a closet. Felicia's delicate fingers guided her needle back and forth making exquisite darns and patches in small petticoats and dresses. One grudging word of approval did her plump and fretful employer allow her.
"You certainly can sew, but you needn't bother to take such small stitches—I wish you'd stop fussing with that and press my frock—"
An ironing board added itself to the other confusion. Propped up between the sewing machine and the uneven metal footboard of a child's crib Felicia eyed it with misgiving. She almost laughed aloud.
"Do you think you'd better risk it with me, Madame?" she asked. "I am not what-you-call-a-blanchisseuse—I have never held a flat-iron—" she was smiling because she was thinking of Grandy's inflexible order "never let her hand be spread on any heavy object."
She lived through My Lady Fretfulness's tirade at this appalling ignorance. She again patiently explained that she was sorry The Exchange had let Madame misunderstand.
"I am only a needlewoman for hand work," she reiterated. "I know only embroidery and mending and knitting and the beading of purses—as they should have informed you—"