How thoughtfully is
everything arranged, weeks beforehand, for the golden, important season
when Miss Clippers can come! On that day, there is to be no extra
sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, no visiting, no receiving, no
reading or writing, but all with one heart and soul are to wait upon
her, intent to forward the great work which she graciously affords
a day's leisure to direct. Seated in her chair of state, with her
well-worn cushion bristling with pins and needles at her side, her ready
roll of patterns and her scissors, she hears, judges, and decides _ex
cathedra_ on the possible or not possible, in that important art on
which depends the right presentation of the floral part of Nature's
great horticultural show. She alone is competent to say whether there is
any available remedy for the stained breadth in Jane's dress,--whether
the fatal spot by any magical hocus-pocus can be cut out from the
fulness, or turned up and smothered from view in the gathers, or
concealed by some new fashion of trimming falling with generous
appropriateness exactly across the fatal weak point. She can tell you
whether that remnant of velvet will make you a basque,--whether Mamma's
old silk can reappear in juvenile grace for Miss Lucy.
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