Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls
CHAPTER XXVII.
MATILDA--BALL DRESSES AND THE BALL--GORES--MISS LINING--THE'PARISHIONER'S PENNYWORTH.'
The Bullers came home again. Colonel St. Quentin had retired, and whenMajor Buller got the regiment, he also left the army and settled in apleasant neighbourhood in the south of England. As soon as Aunt Theresawas fairly established in her new house she sent for Eleanor and me.There was no idea of my remaining permanently. It was only a visit.
The Major (but he was a colonel now) and his wife were very littlechanged. The girls, of course, had altered greatly, and so had I.Matilda was a fashionably-dressed young lady, with a slightly frailappearance at times, as if Nature were still revenging the oldmismanagement and neglect.
It did not need Aunt Theresa to tell us that she was her father'sfavourite daughter. But it was no capricious favouritism, I am sure. Ibelieve Colonel Buller to have been one of those people whose heartshave depths of tenderness that are never sounded. The Bush Housecatastrophe had long ago been swept into the lumber-room of AuntTheresa's memory, but the tender self-reproach of Matilda's father wasstill to be seen in all his care and indulgence of her.
"He'll take me anywhere," said Matilda, with affectionate pride. "Heeven goes shopping with me."
We liked Matilda by far the best of the girls. Partly, no doubt, becauseshe was our old friend, but partly, I think, because intimacy with herfather had developed the qualities she inherited from him, and softenedothers.
To our great satisfaction we discovered that gores were no enigma toMatilda, and she and Aunt Theresa good-naturedly undertook to initiateus into the mysteries of dressmaking.
There was an excellent opportunity. Eleanor was now eighteen, andMatilda seventeen years old. Matilda was to "come out" at a county ballthat was to take place whilst we were with the Bullers, and Mrs.Arkwright consented to let Eleanor go also. Hence ball dresses, andhence also our opportunity for learning how to make them. For they wereto be made by a dressmaker in the house, and she did not reject ourassistance.
The Bullers' drawing-room was divided by folding-doors, and bothdivisions now overflowed with tarlatan and trimmings; but at every freshinroad of callers (and they were hardly less frequent than of old) weyoung ones, and yards of flounces and finery with us, were swept by AuntTheresa into the back drawing-room, like autumn leaves before a breeze.
The dresses were very successful, and so was the ball. I was so anxiousto hear how Eleanor had sped, that I felt quite sure that I could not goto sleep, and that it was a farce to go to bed just when she wasbeginning to dance. I went, however, at last, and had had half anight's sound sleep before rustling, and chattering, and the light frombed-candles woke me to hear the news.
Matilda was looking pale, and somewhat dishevelled, and a great deal ofthe costume at which we had laboured was reduced to rags. Eleanor'sdress was intact, and she herself looked perfectly fresh, partly becauseshe had resisted, with great difficulty, the extreme length of trainthen fashionable, and partly from a sort of general compactness whichseems a natural gift with some people. Poor Matilda had nearly faintedafter one of the dances, and had brought away a violent headache; butshe declared that she had enjoyed herself, and would have stayed torelate her adventures, but Colonel Buller would not allow it, and senther to bed. Eleanor slept with me, so our gossip was unopposed, exceptby warnings.
I set fire to my hair in the effort to decipher the well-filled ballcard, but we put it out, and the candle also, and chatted in bed.
"You must have danced every dance," I said, admiringly.
"We sat out one or two that are down," said Eleanor; "and No. 21 wassupper, but I danced all the rest."
"There was one man you danced several times with," I said, "but Icouldn't make out his name. It looks as if it began with a G."
"Oh, it's not his real name," said Eleanor. "It's the one he says youused to call him by. One reason why I liked him, Margery dear, wasbecause he said he had been so fond of you. You were such a dear littlething, he said. I told him the locket and chain were in goodpreservation."
"Was it Mr. George?" I cried, with so much energy that Aunt Theresa (whoslept next door) heard us, and knocked on the wall to bid us go tosleep.
"We're just going to," Eleanor shouted, and added in lower tones, to me,"Yes, it was Captain Abercrombie. Colonel Buller introduced him to me.He is so nice, and so delightfully fond of dogs and of you, Margery."
"Shall I see him?" I asked. "I should like to see him again. He was verygood to me when I was little."
"Oh yes," said Eleanor. "It was curious his being in the neighbourhood;for the 202nd is in Dublin, you know. And, Margery, he says he has anuncle in Yorkshire. He----"
"Girls! girls!" cried Aunt Theresa; and we went to sleep.
Soon after we returned from our visit to the Bullers, Eleanor and Iresolved to prove the benefit we had reaped from Aunt Theresa'sinstructions by making ourselves some dresses of an inexpensive stuffthat we bought for the purpose.
How well I remember the pattern! A flowering creeper, which followed alight stem upwards through yard after yard of the material. We hadpicked to pieces certain old bodies which fitted us fairly, and ourfirst work was to lay these patterns upon the new stuff, with weights onthem, and so to cut out our new bodies as easily as Matilda (whosedirections we were following) had prophesied that we should. When theseand the sleeves were accomplished (and they looked most business-like),we began upon the skirts. We cut the back and the front breadths, andduly "sloped" the latter. Then came the gores. We folded the breadthsinto three parts; we took a third at one end, and two-thirds at theother, and folded the slope accordingly. It became quite exciting.
"Who would have thought it was so easy?" said I.
Eleanor was almost prone upon the table, cutting the gores with largescissors which made a thoroughly sempstress-like squeak.
"The higher education fades from my view with every snip," she said,laughing. "Upon my word, Margery, I begin to believe this sort of thing_is_ our vocation. It is great fun, and there is absolutely no brainwear and tear."
The gores were parted as she spoke, and (to do us justice) were exactlythe shape of the tarlatan ones Aunt Theresa had cut. But when we came toput them together, they wouldn't fit without turning one of them thewrong side out. Eleanor had boasted too soon. We got headaches andbackaches with stooping and puzzling. We cut up all our stuff, but thegores remained obstinate. By no ingenuity could we combine them so as tobe at once in proper order, the right side out, and the right side (ofthe pattern) up. I really think we cried over them with weariness anddisappointment.
"Algebra's a trifle to it," was poor Eleanor's conclusion.
I went out to clear my brain by a walk, and happening, as I returned, tomeet Jack, I confided our woes to him. One could tell Jack anything.
"You've got it wrong somehow," said Jack, "linking" me. "Come to MissLining's."
Miss Lining was our village dressmaker. A very bad one certainly, butstill she could gore a skirt. She was not a native of the village, andsignified her superior gentility by a mincing pronunciation. She hadalso a hiss with the sibilants peculiar to herself. Before I couldremonstrate, Jack was knocking at the door.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Lining. Miss Margery has been making a dress, andshe's got into a muddle with the gores. Now, how do you manage withgores, Miss Lining?" Jack confidentially inquired, taking his hat off,and accepting a well-dusted chair.
There was now nothing for it but to explain my difficulties, which Idid, Miss Lining saying, "Yisss, misss," at every two or three words.When I had said my say, she sucked the top of her brass thimblethoughtfully for some moments, and then spoke as an oracle.
"There's a hinside and a hout to the stuff? Yisss, misss. And a hup anda down? Yisss, misss."
"And quite half the gores won't fit in anywhere," I desperatelyinterposed.
Miss Lining took another taste of the brass thimble, and then said:
"In course, misss, with a patterned thing there's as ma
ny gores to throwhout as to huse. Yisss, misss."
"_Are there?_" said I. "But what a waste!"
"Ho no, misss! you cuts the body out of the gores you throws hout,misss----"
"Well, if you get the body out of them, there must be a waist!" Jackbroke in, as he sat fondling Miss Lining's tom-cat.
"Ho no, sir!" said Miss Lining, who couldn't have seen a joke to saveher dignity. "They cuts to good add-vantage, sir."
The mystery was now clear to me, and Jack saw this by my face.
"You understand?" said he briefly, setting down the cat.
"Quite," said I. "Our mistake was beginning with the bodies. But we canget some more stuff."
"An odd bit always comes in," said Miss Lining, speaking, I fear, froman experience of bits saved from the dresses of village patrons. "Yisss,misss."
"Well, good-afternoon, Miss Lining," said Jack, who never suffered, asEleanor and I sometimes did, from a difficulty in getting away from acottage. "Thank you very much. Have you heard from your sister at Buxtonlately?"
"Last week, sir," said Miss Lining.
"And how is she?" said Jack urbanely.
He never forgot any one, and he never grudged sympathy--two qualitieswhich made him beloved of the village.
"Quite well, thank you, sir, and the same to you," said Miss Lining,beaming; "except that she do suffer a deal in her inside, sir."
"Chamomile tea is very good for the inside, I believe," said Jack,putting on his hat with perfect gravity.
"So I've 'eerd--yisss, sir," said Miss Lining; "and there's something ofthe same in them pills that's spoke so well of in your magazine, sir, Ithink. I sent by the carrier for a box, sir, on Saturday last, and wouldhave done sooner, but for waiting for Mrs. Barker to pay for thepelerine I made out of her uncle's funeral scarf. Yisss, misss."
Jack was very seldom at a loss, but on this occasion he seemed puzzled.
"Pills recommended in our magazine?" he said, as we strolled up towardsthe Vicarage. "It's those medical tracts you and Eleanor have beentaking round lately."
"There's nothing about pills in them," said I. "They're about drains,and fresh air, and cleanliness. Besides, she said our magazine."
"We don't give them any magazine but the _Parishioner's Pennyworth_ andthe missionary one," said Jack. "I'm stumped, Margery."
But in a few minutes I was startled by his seizing me by the shouldersand leaning against me in a paroxysm of laughter.
"Oh, Margery, I've got it! It _is_ the _Parishioner's Pennyworth_.There's been an advertisement at the end of it for months, like afly-leaf, of Norton's chamomile pills."
And as I unravelled to Eleanor the mystery of our dressmakingdifficulties, we could hear Jack convulsing Mrs. Arkwright with aperfect reproduction of Miss Lining's accent--"Them pills that's spokeso well of in your magazine. Yisss, m'm."
We got some more material, and finished the dresses triumphantly. By thenext summer we were skilful enough to use our taste with some freedomand good success.
I was then fifteen, and in long dresses. I remember some most tastefulcostumes which we produced; and as we contemplated them as they hung,flounced, furbelowed, and finished, upon pegs, Eleanor said:
"I wonder where we shall display these this year?"
How little we knew! We had made the dresses alike, to the nicety of abow, because we thought it ladylike that the costumes of sisters shouldbe so. How far we were from guessing that they would not be worntogether after all!