Laura had always the claret pitcher on her dinner table, too; and claret and water, well-sugared, went deliciously with the savory stew.

They were up-stairs now, in Laura’s chamber; the bed and sofa were covered with silk and millinery; Laura was looking over the girls’ “fall things;” there was a smell of sweet marjoram and thyme and cloves, and general richness coming up from the kitchen; there was a bland sense of the goodness of Providence in Mrs. Megilp’s—­no, not heart, for her heart was not very hungry; but in her eyes and nostrils.

She was advising Mrs. Ledwith to take Desire and Helena’s two green silks and make them over into one for Helena.

“You can get two whole back breadths then, by piecing it up under the sash; and you can’t have all those gores again; they are quite done with.  Everybody puts in whole breadths now.  There’s just as much difference in the way of goring a skirt, as there is between gores and straight selvages.”

“They do hang well, though; they have such a nice slope.”

“Yes,—­but the stripes and the seams!  Those tell the story six rods off; and then there must be sashes, or postillions, or something; they don’t make anything without them; there isn’t any finish to a round waist unless you have something behind.”

“They wore belts last year, and I bought those expensive gilt buckles.  I’m sure they used to look sweetly.  But there! a fashion doesn’t last nowadays while you’re putting a thing on and walking out of the house!”

“And don’t put in more than three plaits,” pursued Mrs. Megilp, intent on the fate of the green silks.  “Everything is gathered; you see that is what requires the sashes; round waists and gathers have a queer look without.”

“If you once begin to alter, you’ve got to make all over,” said Mrs. Ledwith, a little fractiously, putting the scissors in with unwilling fingers.  She knew there was a good four days’ work before her, and she was quick with her needle, too.

“Never mind; the making over doesn’t cost anything; you turn off work so easily; and then you’ve got a really stylish thing.”

“But with all the ripping and remodelling, I don’t get time to turn round, myself, and live!  It is all fall work, and spring work, and summer work and winter work.  One drive rushes pell-mell right over another.  There isn’t time enough to make things and have them; the good of them, I mean.”

“The girls get it; we have to live in our children,” said Mrs. Megilp, self-renouncingly.  “I can never rest until Glossy is provided with everything; and you know, Laura, I am obliged to contrive.”

Mrs. Megilp and her daughter Glaucia spent about a thousand dollars a year, between them, on their dress.  In these days, this is a limited allowance—­for the Megilps.  But Mrs. Megilp was a woman of strict pecuniary principle; the other fifteen hundred must pay all the rest; she submitted cheerfully to the Divine allotment, and punctually made the two ends meet.  She will have this to show, when the Lord of these servants cometh and reckoneth with them, and that man who has been also in narrow circumstances, brings his nicely kept talent out of his napkin.