"We cut the gown from some patterns we got from a magazine; I fitted it, and we both sewed. When it was done, and Judith tried it on, it was very pretty and becoming, and she looked better in it than in the gown she wore when she went to a party. When we had seen that everything was all right, Judith took off the dress, folded it up, and put it away in a drawer. 'Now,' said she, 'I shall not wear that until I go to Cobhurst.' "Well, as everybody knows, houses are never finished at the time they are expected to be, and that was the way with this house, and as Matthias would not go into it until everything was quite ready, the moving was put off and put off until it began to be cold weather, and then he said he would not go into it until spring, for it would be uncomfortable to live in the new house in the winter. "I was very sorry for this, for I thought that the sooner Judith got here the better her chance would be for staying here the rest of her life. Judith did not say much, but I am sure she was sorry too, and Matthias seemed a little out of spirits, as if he were getting a little tired of living with the Pacewalks, and wanted to be in his own house. I think he began to feel more like seeing people, and I know he visited the Stones a good deal. "One day when I was at the Pacewalks' and we were sitting alone, he looked at me and my clothes, and then he said, 'I wish Judith cared more for clothes than she does. I do not mean getting herself up for high days and holidays, but her everyday clothes. I like a woman to wear neat and becoming things all the time.' 'I am sure,' I said, 'Judith's clothes are always very neat!' "'If you mean clean,' he said, 'I will agree to that, but when the color is all washed out of a thing, or it is faded in streaks like that blue gown she wears, the wearing of it day after day is bound to make a person think that a young woman does not care how she looks to her own family, and I do not like young women not to care how they look to their families, especially when calico is only twelve cents a yard, and needles and thread cost almost nothing.' 'Matthias,' said I, 'I expect you have been to see Dorcas Stone, and are comparing her clothes with Judith's. Now, Dorcas' father is a well-to-do man, and Judith hasn't any father, and she does the best she can with the clothes she has.' 'It is not money I am talking about,' he said, 'it is disposition. If a young woman wants to look well in her own family, she will find some way to do it. At any rate, she could let it be seen that she is not satisfied to look like a dowdy.' And then he went away. "This was the first time that Matthias had ever spoken to me about Judith, and I knew just as well as if he had told me that it was Dorcas Stone's clothes that had got him into that way of thinking.