"P—P—P—eggy! Do you mean to say you have been pretending all this time? What do you mean? Have you been putting on all those airs and graces for a joke?" asked Esther, severely, and Peggy gave a feeble splutter of laughter.
"W—wanted to see what you were like! Oh, my heart! Ho! Ho! Ho! wasn't it lovely? Can't keep it up any longer! Good-bye, Mariquita! I'm Peggy now, my dears. Some more tea!"
(To be continued.)
[FROCKS FOR TO-MORROW.]
By "THE LADY DRESSMAKER."
If the French craze for plaids and tartans be followed in England, it will be as well to remind everyone that there are certain people to whom they are quite forbidden. I refer to the very stout and the very thin. And it is to be hoped that these two classes may be wise in season and avoid them. For the rest, the new plaids are, some of them, pretty and in quiet hues, though I noticed, when in Paris, that people liked them more vivid as to colouring, and one consequently saw some very lively-looking ones in scarlet and bright red. These plaids are more used as skirts than as entire dresses; in fact, the newest departure in coats and skirts is to have the skirt of plaid and the coat of a plain cloth which suits it in colour. For this purpose a sacque coat is always used, and this is a fortunate thing, for they suit all figures, thin and stout, equally well; but they, more than any other description of jacket, require a good cut, as they are so easily made to hitch up or to droop at the back by an inexperienced cutter. And the oddest part of it is that no alteration seems to do any good, for the trouble appears to lie deeper than that, in the very foundation of the jacket.
