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The Seamstress
by
“Why didn’t you make these shirts as I told you?” said she, sharply.
“We did,” said Ellen, mildly; “mother measured by the pattern every part, and cut them herself.”
“Your mother must be a fool, then, to make such a piece of work. I wish you would just take them back and alter them over;” and the lady proceeded with the directions, of which neither Ellen nor her mother till then had had any intimation. Unused to such language, the frightened Ellen took up her work and slowly walked homeward.
“O, dear, how my head does ache!” thought she to herself; “and poor mother! she said this morning she was afraid another of her sick turns was coming on, and we have all this work to pull out and do over.”
“See here, mother,” said she, with a disconsolate air, as she entered the room; “Mrs. Rudd says, take out all the bosoms, and rip off all the collars, and fix them quite another way. She says they are not like the pattern she sent; but she must have forgotten, for here it is. Look, mother; it is exactly as we made them.”
“Well, my child, carry back the pattern, and show her that it is so.”
“Indeed, mother, she spoke so cross to me, and looked at me so, that I do not feel as if I could go back.”
“I will go for you, then,” said the kind Maria Stephens, who had been sitting with Mrs. Ames while Ellen was out. “I will take the pattern and shirts, and tell her the exact truth about it. I am not afraid of her.” Maria Stephens was a tailoress, who rented a room on the same floor with Mrs. Ames, a cheerful, resolute, go-forward little body, and ready always to give a helping hand to a neighbor in trouble. So she took the pattern and shirts, and set out on her mission.
But poor Mrs. Ames, though she professed to take a right view of the matter, and was very earnest in showing Ellen why she ought not to distress herself about it, still felt a shivering sense of the hardness and unkindness of the world coming over her. The bitter tears would spring to her eyes, in spite of every effort to suppress them, as she sat mournfully gazing on the little faded miniature before mentioned. “When he was alive, I never knew what poverty or trouble was,” was the thought that often passed through her mind. And how many a poor forlorn one has thought the same!
Poor Mrs. Ames was confined to her bed for most of that week. The doctor gave absolute directions that she should do nothing, and keep entirely quiet–a direction very sensible indeed in the chamber of ease and competence, but hard to be observed in poverty and want.
What pains the kind and dutiful Ellen took that week to make her mother feel easy! How often she replied to her anxious questions, “that she was quite well,” or “that her head did not ache much !” and by various other evasive expedients the child tried to persuade herself that she was speaking the truth. And during the times her mother slept, in the day or evening, she accomplished one or two pieces of plain work, with the price of which she expected to surprise her mother.
It was towards evening when Ellen took her finished work to the elegant dwelling of Mrs. Page. “I shall get a dollar for this,” said she; “enough to pay for mother’s wine and medicine.”
“This work is done very neatly,” said Mrs. Page, “and here is some more I should like to have finished in the same way.”
Ellen looked up wistfully, hoping Mrs. Page was going to pay her for the last work. But Mrs. Page was only searching a drawer for a pattern, which she put into Ellen’s hands, and after explaining how she wanted her work done, dismissed her without saying a word about the expected dollar.