Flora Clark rose, and Mrs. White clutched her skirt and held her back while she whispered something.  However, Flora went across the room to the table, and held up the little trousers that we all might see.  Mrs. Jameson had done what many a novice in trousers-making does:  sewed one leg over the other and made a bag of them.  They were certainly a comical sight.  I don’t know whether Flora’s sense of humor got the better of her wrath, or whether Mrs. White’s expostulation influenced her, but she did not say one word, only stood there holding the trousers, her mouth twitching.  As for the rest of us, it was all we could do to keep our faces straight.  Mrs. Jameson was looking at her book, and did not seem to notice anything; and Harriet was sitting with her back to Flora, of which I was glad.  I should have been sorry to have had the child’s feelings hurt.

Flora laid the trousers on the table and came back to her seat without a word, and I know that Mrs. White sat up nearly all night ripping them, and cutting them over, and sewing them together again, in season to have them packed in the barrel the next day.

In the mean time, Mrs. Jameson was finding the place in her book; and just as Mrs. Peter Jones had asked Mrs. Butters if it were true that Dora Peckham was going to marry Thomas Wells and had bought her wedding dress, and before Mrs. Butters had a chance to answer her (she lives next door to the Peckhams), she rapped with the scissors on the table.

“Ladies,” said she.  “Ladies, attention!”

I suppose we all did stiffen up involuntarily; it was so obviously not Mrs. Jameson’s place to call us to order and attention.  Of course she should have been introduced by our President, who should herself have done the rapping with the scissors.  Flora Clark opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. White clutched her arm and looked at her so beseechingly that she kept quiet.

Mrs. Jameson continued, utterly unconscious of having given any offence.  We supposed that she did not once think it possible that we knew what the usages of ladies’ societies were.  “Ladies,” said she, “I am sure that you will all prefer having your minds improved and your spheres enlarged by the study and contemplation of one of the greatest authors of any age, to indulging in narrow village gossip.  I will now read to you a selection from Robert Browning.”

Mrs. Jameson said Robert Browning with such an impressive and triumphantly introductory air that it was almost impossible for a minute not to feel that Browning was actually there in our sewing circle.  She made a little pause, too, which seemed to indicate just that.  It was borne upon Mrs. White’s mind that she ought to clap, and she made a feeble motion with her two motherly hands which one or two of us echoed.