Florence gave reluctant consent, with doubt in her heart; she was what Jean called “fussy” about her work, and she had never sewed with “ravellings”; she resolved to watch closely and be ready with objections at the earliest possible moment. But while the volunteer was choosing a needle Derrick came ready to do the errand that had been asked of him, and to ask innumerable questions. Just what was it she wanted at Wheeler’s and where was the thing to be matched. Must he undertake to match it, or would the clerk do it for him. Just exactly how much did she want, and what would it probably cost. If he did not find it at Wheeler’s was he to go elsewhere, and if so, where. Florence had to hunt through boxes and baskets for the desired samples, then go to her mother for advice as to measurements, then find her pocketbook for Derrick to use, as he announced himself “dead broke.” When she at last turned from him to give belated attention to ravellings her remarks were all exclamatory:
“You don’t mean that you have done it! Have you been all round that skirt already? Why it is only a few minutes since you began! Do look at it! The stitches are not there at all! I mean I can’t find one of them! How perfectly lovely! I just dreaded that hem! Aunt Elsie, I believe you are a witch!”
“It doesn’t take long to hem with ravellings,” Aunt Elsie said when she was given a chance to speak. “I saw the stitches weren’t going to grin, and as you were busy with Derrick I pushed right on. Now suppose you let me put in these sleeves? I’m a master hand at sleeves; I took lessons how to do them, of a first-class dressmaker’s.”
Florence, who was not a “master hand” and had dreaded the sleeves almost as much as the hem, relinquished them with a relieved sigh, and boasted of them the next time she made a dash to the kitchen to consult her mother.
“Don’t you think, they came right the first time! and even Ray has to rip them out once. She goes at things as though she had been a dressmaker all her life; and she’s quick, too.”
When the garment reached the trying-on stage, and Florence was posing before the sideboard mirror, her aunt, who had worked steadily and skillfully on other than hems and sleeves, asked a question that was even then puzzling the young girl:
“How are you going to finish the neck? Is it to be faced, or bound, or what?”
“I guess it will have to be ‘What,’” Florence said, trying to laugh. “I don’t know how to fix it, I am sure. I suppose I shall use the old collar again in some fashion; it is too small, and not the right shape anyway, but it will have to do.”
Her aunt reached for the collar in question and examined it critically.
“It could be set on with a bit of lace,” she said, presently. “Wide lace, you know, falling below it, and a narrower bit above, of the same pattern; you have seen them made in that way, haven’t you?”