“I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;” he said to her, when tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table.  “You don’t snarl yourselves up.  I can’t bear a tangle of things.”

Ray colored.

“You mean skirts, I suppose,” she said, laughing “We can’t afford two apiece, at a time.  So we have taken to aprons.”

It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look.  They wore plain black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with broad, hemmed bows.  They were of cross-barred muslin, for every day,—­cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon serious occasions.  This was their house wear; in the street they contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a “snarl.”

“There’s one thing certin,” put in Mrs. Ingraham.  “Women can’t be dolls and live women too.  I don’t ever want anything on that’ll hender me from goin’ right into whatever there is to be gone into.  It’s cloe’s that makes all the diffikelty nowadays.  Young women can’t do housework because of their cloe’s; ’tisn’t because they ain’t as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn’t try to wear a load and move one too.  Folks that live a little nicer than common, and keep girls, don’t have more than five hours to their day; the rest of the time, they’re dressed up; and that means tied up.  They can’t see to their girls; they grow helplesser all the time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and upstrupperousness, and changes; and there’s an up-stairs and a down-stairs to every house, and no home anywhere.  That’s how it is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it.  Why, the help has to get into their humpty-dumpties by three or four o’clock, and see their company.  If there’s sickness or anything, that they can’t, they’re up a tree and off.  I’ve known of folks breakin’ up and goin’ to board, because they were afraid of sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was gruel to make and waitin’ up and down to do.  There ain’t much left to depend on but hotels and hospitals. Home is too big a worry.  And I do believe, my soul, its cloe’s that’s at the bottom of it.  It’s been growin’ wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler biasses came in, and that’s five and twenty years ago.”

Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,—­as the Scotch grow more Scotch,—­with warming up to the subject.

Sunderline laughed.

“Well, I must go,” he said; “though you do look so bright and cosy here.  Half past seven’s the last train, and there’s a little job at home I promised mother I’d do to-night.  I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had any hammer and nails of my own.  Ray!”