But now, all poor Miss Bree’s “best places” had slipped away from her, and her life had changed.  People go to great outfitting stores, buy their goods, have themselves measured, and leave the whole thing to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything fitted and machined and finished, with the last inventions and accumulations of frills, tucks, and reduplications; and at the bottom of the box a bill tucked and reduplicated in the same modern proportions.

Miss Bree had now to go out, like any other machine girl, to the warerooms; except when she took home particular hand-work of button holes and trimmings, or occasionally engaged herself for two or three days to some family mother who could not pay the big bills, and who ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and hired help for basting and finishing.  She had almost done with even this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles, sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about.  Poor “Aunt Blin” overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room before dinner, “Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the house, she couldn’t find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, instead of that old callariper?”

Miss Bree behaved like a saint; it was not the lady’s fault; she resisted the temptation to a sudden headache and declining her dinner, for fear of hurting the feelings of her employer, who had always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old hair, took off her glasses, wiped her eyes a little, washed her hands, and went down when she was called; but after that day she “left off going out to work for families.”

The warehouses did not pay her very well; neither there was she able to compete with the smart young seamstresses; she only got a dollar and a quarter a day, and had to lodge and feed herself; yet she kept on; it was her lot and living; she looked out at her third-story window upon the roofs and spires, listened to the fire alarms, heard the chimes of a Sunday, saw carriages roll by and well-dressed people moving to and fro, felt the thrill of the daily bustle, and was, after all, a part of this great, beautiful Boston!  Strange though it seem, Miss Belinda Bree was content.

Content enough to tell charming stories of it, up in the country, to her niece Bel, when she was questioned by her.

Of her room all to herself, so warm in winter, with a red carpet (given her by the very Mrs.  “Callariper” who could not help a misgiving, after all, that Miss Bree’s vocation had been ended with that wretched word), and a coal stove, and a big, splendid brindled gray cat—­Bartholomew—­lying before it; of her snug little housekeeping, with kindlings in the closet drawer, and milk-jug out on the stone window-sill; of the music-mistress who had the room