only fit."

She removed the cluster of pins from her mouth and unfastened the long
strip of newspaper from the section of the old black skirt which she
had ripped apart that afternoon for a pattern. It was far too
short--that old skirt--to duplicate the long free lines of the
brilliant red and black costume of the dancer beside her elbow on the
table, but Dryad Anderson's shears, coasting rapidly around the edge
of the worn cloth, had left a wide margin of safety at the hem.

The critical frown upon her forehead smoothed little by little while
she lifted cautiously that long strip of paper pattern and turned with
it dangling from one hip to walk up and down before the tilted mirror
at the far end of the room, viewing her reflected image from every
possible angle. Even the thoughtful pucker at the corners of her eyes
disappeared and she nodded her small head with its loosened mass of
hair in judicious satisfaction.

"I do believe that's it," the hushed voice mused on, "or, if it isn't,
it is as near as I can ever hope to get it. If--if only it doesn't sag
at the heels--and if it does I'll have to----"

Again with a last approving glance flung over one shoulder the
murmured comment, whatever it might have been, was finished
wordlessly. Her fingers, in spite of their very smallness as strong
and straight and clean-jointed as those of the old man bent double
over his bench in the back room, lingered absently over the folding of
that last paper pattern, and when she finally added it to the top of
the stack already folded and piled beside the lamp her eyes had become
velvety blank with preoccupation.

From early afternoon, ever since the Judge himself had whirled up to
the sagging gate at the end of their rotting boardwalk and clambered
out of his yellow-wheeled buckboard to knock with measured solemnity
at the front door, Dryad had been rushing madly from task to task and
pausing always in just such fashion in the midst of each to stand
dreamily immobile, everything else forgotten for the moment in an
effort to visualize it--to understand that it was real, after all, and
not just a cobweb fabric of her own fancy, like the dreams she was
always weaving to make the long week days pass more quickly.

It was more than a few years since the last time Judge Maynard had
driven up to the gate of that old, drab cottage; and now standing
there with one slim outstretched hand lovingly patting the bundle of
paper patterns which r