"I dare say the pickpockets made a fine harvest," said Mrs. Thorpe. "It is a very favorite scheme of theirs, and the theatre is a favorite place for their operations. But there, don't cry, my dears, perhaps I can help you about the clothes. You had better look at your camlet dresses and see whether they do not need mending, and if so do it at once. Camlet ravels so badly. I will match the color for you in fine sewing-silk." A customer at this moment called Mrs. Thorpe into the shop. We betook ourselves to our own room, and there we did have a little cry together over our lost guineas. But there was no use in wasting time in regrets, and there were our new gowns of plum-colored silk camlet, each with a long slit down the side to be mended. Mrs. Thorpe matched the silk nicely, and after the repairs were finished, we set to collecting all our working materials. We had begun several pieces at St. Jean, and purchased quite a little store of embroidery silks and lace thread, in Toulon. Amabel proposed that we should take up these pieces and finish them in rotation. We still had our table covered with them when Mrs. Thorpe came up and began admiring them. "I'll tell you what, my dear Mrs. Amabel and Mrs. Lucy, (I shall never learn to use this new-fangled title, and I don't know that I care to either. In my young days, to call a lady a Miss was to give her about the worst name one could devise), but I'll tell you what, young ladies, I was going to offer to provide you with the stuff for your work, but if you choose to finish these two cravats which I see you have begun, I can sell them for you for money enough to clothe the poor girl and send her to school into the bargain, and then the gift will be all your own. But they must be done soon, for fashions, you know, change like the moon, only one can't calculate on their changes." Here was an unexpected way out of our trouble. I confess the thought did cross my mind that it was somewhat beneath the dignity of young ladies of quality to work for money, and I said as much to Amabel when Mrs. Thorpe had left the room to superintend the moving of the harpsichord. "But we are working for the poor in making the lace as much as if we were knitting hose or making shifts," replied Amabel. "The mothers and sisters used to work for money, and they were of noble family." "But they were religious, and vowed to humility and poverty," I objected. "Does not that make a difference?" "The more I think about it, the more it seems to me, that no one person is bound to be religious more than another," said Amabel. "You know we should both have become nuns if we had had our way, and why are we to be less devoted because we live here instead of at St. Jean?"