"My father was a country minister," Mrs. Harrington explained, flinging the green frock, inside out, over the steely shoulders of Dora, the dress-frame. "I cook very nicely, if I do say it myself, and till I was seventeen I did every bit of my own sewing." "And were you married at seventeen?" "No," Phyllis answered, stopping a moment from her pinnings and speaking more gravely. "My father died then, and I went to work. I hadn't time to sew after that--I bought ready-made things. So when I _was_ married--that was a long seven years afterwards--I did have such lovely times buying organdies and laces and things and cutting them out and making them! That was the summer Allan was getting well." She stared off at the wall for a moment, as she knelt up against the green satin. "That was the loveliest summer I ever had--excepting every one since." She laughed a little, then prevented herself from further speech by putting a frieze of pins in her mouth and beginning to do something with the dress with them, one by one. "Do you mind cutting into this?" she asked when that row was gone. "The more the better!" said Joy with enthusiasm. "It will make a stunning frock, with the silver net draped over the pale-green satin... M'm. That silver iridescent girdle on the other dress--the violet--can I have that, too?" Joy ripped and handed with tremulously eager hands, while Phyllis swiftly cut away the sleeves of the green dress and slashed a _décolletage_, and draped the net over it and pinned on the girdle. "Try if you can get into that without being scratched," she invited, lifting the frock gingerly off Dora and dropping it over Joy. Then she wheeled her around to where she could see her reflection in the tall pier-glass between the windows. "Of course, that's rough," she told her; "but what do you think of it, generally? Are there any changes you want?" "Oh, not one!" Joy replied ecstatically, regarding the slim little green and silver figure in the glass. "It needs to be shorter," meditated Phyllis aloud, and fell to pinning it up to the proper shortness. Joy continued to look at it rapturously. It had been a straight, long gown, and all Phyllis had needed to do was to drape it with the net ripped from the other dress and shorten and cut it into fashionableness. It was charming--springlike and becoming, and, best of all, strictly up to date! "Don't you think you'll feel equal to being the feature of the reception in that?" demanded Phyllis. "I certainly should in your place.... That is, if you have silver slippers." "I have, and I think I do," said Joy gravely. "Then I'll hand this over to Viola to put the finishing stitches in. Look out the window--do you see anything familiar coming up the path?" Joy, in her pinned finery, looked, then snatched her clothes from the sofa, where they lay in state, and ran upstairs. John was coming along the path, and she didn't want him to know about her frock till it was all done.