and so she was quite happy for the next few days. All her
little friends looked upon her with wonder when they heard that she was
going away to boarding-school, and Ruby's announcement to them that she
was going to take a trunk added to the importance of the occasion quite
as much as she had hoped it would.

There was only a week in which to make all preparations for her going,
so you can imagine that they were very busy days. Miss Abigail Hart,
the dressmaker who made every one's clothes, when they were not made by
people themselves, came to the house every day, and sewed all day long,
and Aunt Emma helped her most of the time. If it had not been for the
thoughts of the trunk, Ruby would have found some of these days very
tiresome. She had to be always ready in case Miss Hart should want to
try on any of her dresses, so she could not go very far away from the
house, and she found Miss Hart's dressmaking very different from her
mother's dressmaking.

Miss Abigail Hart was tall and thin, and as Ruby and many other little
girls said, had quite forgotten all about the time when she was a
little girl; so when she went to houses to sew, the children usually
tried to keep out of her way as much as possible. Her hands were very
cold, whether it was summer or winter, and she never liked it if any
one whom she was fitting jumped about when her cold fingers touched
one's neck. She wore long scissors, tied by a ribbon to her waist, and
these scissors were always cold; and it was not at all a pleasant
operation to have the waist of a dress fitted, and have Miss Abigail's
cold fingers, and her still colder scissors creeping about one's neck.

"If you don't keep still it will not be my fault if you get a cut,"
Miss Abigail would say, and I am not sure but that some of the little
girls were afraid that their very heads might be snipped off by a slip
of those shining blades, if they wriggled about when the necks of their
dresses were being trimmed down.

Miss Abigail was very slow, so it took a long time to go through this
operation, and the worst part of it was that one fitting never was
sufficient. At least twice, and sometimes three times she would repeat
it, and there were plenty of Ruby's friends who had said that not for
all the new dresses in the world would they want to have Miss Abigail
fit them. They would rather have but one dress and have that dress
made by their mothers, if they had to choose between that and th