reproving now and then for some careless tension, rough fastening,
or clumsy seam. Out of it all were resulting lovely white suits;
delicate, cloud-like, flounced robes of bewitching tints; graceful
morning wrappers,--perfect toilets of all kinds for girls at
watering-places and in elegant summer homes.

Orders kept coming down from the mountains, up from the
sea-beaches, in from the country seats, where gay, friendly circles
were amusing away the time, and making themselves beautiful before
each others' eyes.

For it was fearfully hot again this year.

Bel Bree did not care. It all amused her. She had not got worn down
yet, and she did not live in a cheap, working-girls' boarding-house.
She had had radishes that morning with her bread and butter, and a
little of last year's fruit out of a tin can for supper the night
before. That was the way Miss Bree managed about peaches. I believe
that was the way she thought the petition in the Litany was
answered,--"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, that
in due time we may enjoy them;" after the luckier people have had
their fill, and begun on the new, and the cans are cheap. There are
ways of managing things, even with very little money. If you pay for
the _managing_, you have to do without the things. Bel and her aunt
together, with their united earnings and their nice, cosy ways, were
very far from being uncomfortable. Bel said she liked the
pinch,--what there was of it. She liked "a little bit brought home
in a paper and made much of."

Bel had been just a fortnight in the city. She had gone right to
work with her aunt at Fillmer & Bylles, she was bright and quick,
knew how to run a "Wilcox & Gibbs," and had "some perception," the
forewoman said, grimly; with a delicate implication that some others
had not. Miss Tonker's praises always pared off on one side what
they put on upon another.

It had taken Bel a fortnight to feel her ground, and to get exactly
the "lay of the land." Then she went to work, unhesitatingly, to set
some small things right.

This morning she had hurried herself and her aunt, come early, and
put Miss Bree down, resolutely, against all her disclaimers, in a
corner of the very best window in the room. To do this, she moved
Matilda Meane's sewing-machine a little.

When Matilda Meane came in, she looked as though she thought the
world was moved. She did not exactly dare to order Miss Bree up; but
she elbowed about, she pushed he