“Did ye speak of chances for me?” cried Kirsteen in youthful fury. “Me that would not look at one of them, if it was the prince out of the story book. Me that—!” She turned away to dash a hot tear from her dazzling wet eyes—“me that am waiting for him!” Kirsteen said in her heart.
Her faithful champion looked at her with anxious eyes. “If she would but say that’s what she’s meaning,” was Marg’ret’s commentary. “Eh, I wonder if that’s what she’s meaning? but when neither the ane nor the ither says a word, how is a person to ken?” It slightly overclouded her triumph to think that perhaps for her favourite the chances were all forestalled, and even that trouble might come out of it if somebody should throw the handkerchief at Kirsteen whom her father approved. The cold chill of such an alarm not seldom comes across the designer of future events when all has been carefully arranged to quicken the action of Providence. But Marg’ret put that discouraging alarm hastily out of her mind. Right or wrong it was always a good thing that her nurslings should see the world.
When the roll of white muslin arrived that was to make the famous gowns, and when Miss Macnab (who was not without claims in some far-away manner to be connected with a family in as near as the tenth remove from the Laird of Macnab’s own sovereign race) came over with her little valise, and her nécessaire full of pins and needles, and was put into the best room, and became for the time the centre of interest in the household—Marg’ret could scarcely contain herself for pleasure. “A’ the hoose” with the exception of the boys, who at this stage of their development counted for little, snatched every available moment to look in upon Miss Macnab—who sat in state, with a large table covered with cuttings, and two handmaids at least always docile beside her, running up gores or laying hems. It might be thought, indeed, that the fashion of that time required no great amount of labour in the construction of two white dresses for a pair of girls. But Miss Macnab was of a different opinion. She did not know, indeed, the amount of draping and arranging, the skill of the artist in the fine hanging of folded stuffs, or even the multitudinous flouncings of an intermediate age into which the art of dress was to progress.
The fashions of 1814 look like simplicity itself; the long, straight, narrow skirt, the short waist, the infantile sleeves, would seem to demand little material and less trouble for their simple arrangement. But no doubt this was more in appearance than in reality, and the mind of the artist is always the same whatever his materials may be.
Miss Macnab kept the young ladies under hand for hours fitting every line—not folds, for folds there were none—so that the skirt might cling sufficiently without affording too distinct a revelation of the limbs beneath, an art perhaps as difficult as any of the more modern contrivances.
Mary stood like a statue under the dressmaker’s hands. She was never weary; so long as there was a pleat or seam that needed correction, a pinch too little here, a fulness too much there, she was always ready. The white gown was moulded upon her with something like a sculptor’s art. Miss Macnab, with her mouth full of pins, and her fingers seamed with work, pinned and pulled, and stretched out and drew in, with endless perseverance. She was an artist in her way. It was terrible to her, as a mistake on the field of battle to a general, to send forth into the world a gown that did not fit, a pucker or a twist in any garment she made. There are no Miss Macnabs nowadays, domestic professors of the most primitive yet everlasting of arts. The trouble she took over her composition would tire out a whole generation of needlewomen, and few girls even for a first ball would stand like Mary to be manipulated. And there is no such muslin now as the fine and fairy web, like the most delicate lawn, which was the material of those wonderful gowns, and little workmanship so delicate as that which put together the long seams, and made invisible hems round the scanty but elaborate robe.
Kirsteen, who was not so patient as her sister, looked on with a mixture of contempt and admiration. It did not, to her young mind and thoughts occupied with a hundred varying interests, seem possible at first to give up all that time to the perfection even of a ball-dress. But presently the old seamstress with her devotion to her art began to impress the open-minded girl. It was not a very rich living which Miss Macnab derived from all this labour and care. To see her kneeling upon her rheumatic knees, directing the easy fall of the soft muslin line to the foot which ought to peep from underneath without deranging the exactness of the delicate hem, was a wonder to behold. A rivulet of pins ran down the seam, and Miss Macnab’s face was grave and careful as if the destinies of a kingdom were upon that muslin line.
“What trouble you are taking!” cried Kirsteen. “And it’s not as if it were silk or velvet but just a muslin gown.”
Miss Macnab looked up from where she knelt by Mary’s knee. She had to take the pins out of her mouth before she could speak, which was inconvenient, for no pincushion is ever so handy. “Missie,” she said, “my dear, ye just show your ignorance: for there’s nothing so hard to take a good set as a fine muslin; and the maist difficult is aye the maist particular, as ye would soon learn if ye gave yoursel’ to any airt.”
Kirsteen, who knew very little of any art, but thought it meant painting pictures, here gave vent, to her own shame afterwards, to a little laugh, and said hastily, “I would just set it straight and sew it up again if it was me.”