tle pleased to have in her
possession a card of invitation to a splendid wedding-party that was
going to be given, on Friday, at the Wilcox Manor. She thought it a very
becoming mark of respect to the deceased Mr. Scudder that his widow and
daughter should be brought to mind,--so becoming and praiseworthy,
in fact, that, "though an old woman," as she said, with a complacent
straightening of her tall, lithe figure, she really thought she must
make an effort to go.

Accordingly, early one morning, after all domestic duties had been
fulfilled, and the clock, loudly ticking through the empty rooms, told
that all needful bustle had died down to silence, Mrs. Katy, Mary, and
Miss Prissy Diamond, the dressmaker, might have been observed sitting in
solemn senate around the camphor-wood trunk, before spoken of, and which
exhaled vague foreign and Indian perfumes of silk and sandal-wood.

You may have heard of dignitaries, my good reader,--but, I assure you,
you know very little of a situation of trust or importance compared to
that of _the_ dress-maker in a small New England town.

What important interests does she hold in her hands! How is she
besieged, courted, deferred to! Three months beforehand, all her days
and nights are spoken for; and the simple statement, that _only_ on that
day you can have Miss Clippers, is of itself an apology for any omission
of attention elsewhere,--it strikes home at once to the deepest
consciousness of every woman, married or single. How thoughtfully is
everything arranged, weeks beforehand, for the golden, important season
when Miss Clippers can come! On that day, there is to be no extra
sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, no visiting, no receiving, no
reading or writing, but all with one heart and soul are to wait upon
her, intent to forward the great work which she graciously affords
a day's leisure to direct. Seated in her chair of state, with her
well-worn cushion bristling with pins and needles at her side, her ready
roll of patterns and her scissors, she hears, judges, and decides _ex
cathedra_ on the possible or not possible, in that important art on
which depends the right presentation of the floral part of Nature's
great horticultural show. She alone is competent to say whether there is
any available remedy for the stained breadth in Jane's dress,--whether
the fatal spot by any magical hocus-pocus can be cut out from the
fulness, or turned up and smothered from view in the gathers,