Miss McGregor took no more notice than if I had been reciting poetry to myself. “If you wouldn’t mind just slipping it on now,” she said, with gentle persistence; “I won’t keep you a minute--unless you have anything else you could give me to do. You said something about altering a skirt.” The back door bell rang. “I think it’s Jones’s boy,” said Ruth. “Have you decided what you will have for dinner?” “If you please, ma’am,” said Louise, appearing at the kitchen door, “is there a parcel to go back to Huggins’s?” “It will be the buttons for your coat,” said Miss McGregor, “did you decide----” I heard my daughter’s voice on the stairs: “Mother!” she called. “Mother! Miss Mathers wants to know if it is going to rain, because, if so, shall I wear my old coat? She says it isn’t fit to go out in, but it is too cold for the other, unless you would like me to put on a woolly, and I haven’t got one, so shall I----” I dashed up the kitchen stairs. They got Miss McGregor out of the flour-bin afterwards, less damaged than I could have wished. Anne picked herself up, and decided to chance the weather as offering the least risk of the two. Jones’s boy, and Huggins’s boy, and Ruth, and the beef, and Louise came to some decision amongst themselves about the buttons and the curry. When I came back from a pleasant morning in the woods, I heard that Miss McGregor was looking for me to slip on a bodice, and the efficient female had called. “Has Mrs. Simpson been?” I asked. “I beg pardon, ma’am,” said Perrin, “who did you say?” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied. “I half expected a Mrs. Simpson; in fact I thought I saw her in the drive. She would have attended to Miss McGregor at once.” The efficient female said I looked tired, and was anything the matter? “No,” I said, “nothing particular; but do you always slip on things when you are asked--that is, when there is a dressmaker in the house?” “Oh, never,” she assured me. “I have a stand made to exactly my own shape, and they never need to trouble me at all.” “But can you judge how a thing will look with a great red twill bust and a stump sticking out of it?” “Oh, perfectly; it only needs a little imagination.” When she had gone, I went to Miss McGregor. “Look here,” I said, “you slip the things on the housemaid and pretend she is me. It only needs a little imagination.” Miss McGregor was sitting in a shower of bits. She took no notice of my suggestion.