“Yours,
Bathsheba Mewlstone.”
“Oh, I must go now!” observed Phillis, in an embarrassed voice, as she laid this singular note before Nan.
“Yes, dear; and you had better put on your hat at once, and Dulce and I will walk with you as far as the gate. It is sad for you to miss the scramble on the shore; but, when other people really want us, I feel as though it were a direct call,” finished Nan, solemnly.
“I am afraid there is a storm coming up,” replied Phillis, who had been oppressed all day by the heavy thundery atmosphere: 198 she had looked so heated and weary that Nan had proposed a walk by the shore. Work was pouring upon them from all sides: the townspeople, envious of Mrs. Trimmings’s stylish new dress, were besieging the Friary with orders, and the young dressmakers would have been literally overwhelmed with their labors, only that Nan, with admirable foresight, insisted on taking in no more work than they felt themselves able to complete.
“No,” she would say to some disappointed customer, “our hands are full just now, and we cannot undertake any more orders at present: we will not promise more than we can perform. Come to me again in a fortnight’s time, and we will willingly make your dress, but now it is impossible.” And in most cases the dress was brought punctually at the time appointed.
Phillis used to grumble a little at this.
“You ought not to refuse orders, Nan,” she said, rather fretfully, once. “Any other dressmaker would sit up half the night rather than disappoint a customer.”
“My dear,” Nan returned, in her elder-sisterly voice, which had always a great effect on Phillis, “I wonder what use Dulce and you would be if you sat up sewing half the night, and drinking strong tea to keep yourselves awake? No, there shall be no burning the candles at both ends in this fashion; please God we will keep our health, and our customers; and no one in their senses could call us idle. Why, we are quite the fashion! Mrs. Squails told me yesterday that every one in Hadleigh was wild to have a gown made by the ‘lady dressmakers.’”
“Oh, I daresay!” replied Phillis, crossly, for the poor thing was so hot and tired that she could have cried from pure weariness and vexation of spirit: “but we shall not be the fashion long when the novelty wears off; people will call us independent, and get tired of us; and no wonder, if they are to wait for their dresses in this way.”
Nan’s only answer was to look at Phillis’s pale face in a pitying way; and then she took her hand, and led her to the corner, where her mother’s Bible always lay, and then with ready fingers turned to the well known-passage, “Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor unto the evening.”