I had told Miss Fannie on the quiet that the price of making the dresses would be doubled if she would have them ready for the 17th of August, and they were ready. Miss Araminta and Miss Susanna thought it was a bad example to set, as it might not be just to the other Twickenham-Towners to pay more than they could pay, and it stuck Miss Araminta pretty deep to hand out more than was necessary. But I told her it was an emergency operation and that kind always came high. And also I told them that Miss Fannie charged entirely too little for her work, and it was poor religion to go to church on Sunday and sing praises to God and underpay a poor little dressmaker. They said they supposed it was, but I don't think they thought it very reverential in me to speak of God in connection with a dress-maker and what she got for sewing. I gave each one a list of their expenditures, with the cost of everything on it, and each had a little left over after getting their slippers and some sachet powder and a bottle of violet-water apiece, and, after all, that brother of Miss Araminta's got a little of the sapphire money. But it wasn't much. I saw to that. It's been awfully exciting in Twickenham lately. The event of the year is the MacLean party and the best of everything is saved for it, and in itself it makes every tongue in town talk until you wonder why tongues are the only things that never tire, and then, lo and behold! two days before it came off back comes Elizabeth Hamilton Carter, bringing her beau behind her, and off start the same tongues on a new lap and no breath taken in between. I wish Billy could see it, the thing Elizabeth brought back! He wears men's clothes (very good ones) and he is twenty-seven years old, and has large hands and feet and ears and a feeble mustache, but as a man he isn't much. He looks like a hatter and is seemingly dumb, and he blinks his eyes so continually that no one can tell their color. Also he bites his finger-nails. I advised Elizabeth to get a beau _pro tem._, but I didn't mean anything like that. If she wants jealousy to bring Whythe back to her she should keep something on hand to be jealous of. Elizabeth has an iron will and a copper determination, but about as much judgment as a horse-fly.