r on the bed, and had a happy half hour in telling the girl
where she had bought the material and where she had it made up, and how
it came home just as she was going away, and she did not find out that it
was all wrong till a week afterwards when she tried it on. By the end of
this time the girl had commended herself so much by judicious and
sympathetic assent, that Mrs. Lander learned with a shock of
disappointment that her mother expected her to bring the garment home
with her, where Mrs. Lander was to come and have it fitted over for the
alterations she wanted made.

"But I supposed, from what Mr. Landa said, that your motha would come
here and fit me!" she lamented.

"I guess he didn't undastand, 'm. Motha doesn't eva go out to do wo'k,"
said Clementina gently but firmly.

"Well, I might have known Mr. Landa would mix it up, if it could be
mixed;" Mrs. Lander's sense of injury was aggravated by her suspicion
that he had brought the girl in the hope of pleasing her, and confirming
her in the wish to have her with them; she was not a woman who liked to
have her way in spite of herself; she wished at every step to realize
that she was taking it, and that no one else was taking it for her.

"Well," she said dryly, "I shall have to see about it. I'm a good deal of
an invalid, and I don't know as I could go back and fo'th to try on. I'm
moa used to havin' the things brought to me."

"Yes'm," said Clementina. She moved a little from the bed, on her way to
the door, to be ready for Mrs. Lander in leave-taking.

"I'm real sorry," said Mrs. Lander. "I presume it's a disappointment for
you, too."

"Oh, not at all," answered Clementina. "I'm sorry we can't do the wo'k
he'a; but I know mocha wouldn't like to. Good-mo'ning,'m!"

"No, no! Don't go yet a minute! Won't you just give me my hand bag off
the bureau the'a?" Mrs. Lander entreated, and when the girl gave her the
bag she felt about among the bank-notes which she seemed to have loose in
it, and drew out a handful of them without regard to their value. "He'a!"
she said, and she tried to put the notes into Clementina's hand, "I want
you should get yourself something."

The girl shrank back. "Oh, no'm," she said, with an effect of seeming to
know that her refusal would hurt, and with the wish to soften it.
"I--couldn't; indeed I couldn't."

"Why couldn't you? Now you must! If I can't let you have the wo'k the way
you want, I don't think it's fair, and you ought to