Mary stood like a statue under the dressmaker’s hands. She was never weary; so long as there was a pleat or seam that needed correction, a pinch too little here, a fulness too much there, she was always ready. The white gown was moulded upon her with something like a sculptor’s art. Miss Macnab, with her mouth full of pins, and her fingers seamed with work, pinned and pulled, and stretched out and drew in, with endless perseverance. She was an artist in her way. It was terrible to her, as a mistake on the field of battle to a general, to send forth into the world a gown that did not fit, a pucker or a twist in any garment she made. There are no Miss Macnabs nowadays, domestic professors of the most primitive yet everlasting of arts. The trouble she took over her composition would tire out a whole generation of needlewomen, and few girls even for a first ball would stand like Mary to be manipulated. And there is no such muslin now as the fine and fairy web, like the most delicate lawn, which was the material of those wonderful gowns, and little workmanship so delicate as that which put together the long seams, and made invisible hems round the scanty but elaborate robe. Kirsteen, who was not so patient as her sister, looked on with a mixture of contempt and admiration. It did not, to her young mind and thoughts occupied with a hundred varying interests, seem possible at first to give up all that time to the perfection even of a ball-dress. But presently the old seamstress with her devotion to her art began to impress the open-minded girl. It was not a very rich living which Miss Macnab derived from all this labour and care. To see her kneeling upon her rheumatic knees, directing the easy fall of the soft muslin line to the foot which ought to peep from underneath without deranging the exactness of the delicate hem, was a wonder to behold. A rivulet of pins ran down the seam, and Miss Macnab’s face was grave and careful as if the destinies of a kingdom were upon that muslin line. “What trouble you are taking!” cried Kirsteen. “And it’s not as if it were silk or velvet but just a muslin gown.” Miss Macnab looked up from where she knelt by Mary’s knee. She had to take the pins out of her mouth before she could speak, which was inconvenient, for no pincushion is ever so handy. “Missie,” she said, “my dear, ye just show your ignorance: for there’s nothing so hard to take a good set as a fine muslin; and the maist difficult is aye the maist particular, as ye would soon learn if ye gave yoursel’ to any airt.” Kirsteen, who knew very little of any art, but thought it meant painting pictures, here gave vent, to her own shame afterwards, to a little laugh, and said hastily, “I would just set it straight and sew it up again if it was me.”