The fact is, my dear lady, that you are very
particular about having your commissions executed to the hour, and
your dressmakers are anxious to oblige, knowing that you never
squabble over the price. To be sure, you have never heard of the
flat-footed Jew man--how should you? And we may believe that your
dressmakers knew just as little of the poor woman who had used to be
the friend of the Small People. But the truth remains that, in the
press of your many pleasures, you were pardonably twenty-four hours
late in ordering the gown in which you were to appear an angel.
Ah, madam! will it comfort you to hear that _you_ were the one to
reconcile the Small People with that poor sister of yours who had
left them, twenty years before, and wanted them so sorely?
The hospital doctor gave her complaint a long name, and I gather that
it has a place by itself in books of pathology. But the woman's tale
was that, after she had been stitching through the long night, the
dawn came through the roof and found her with four marguerites still
left to be embroidered in gold on the pieces of satin that lay in her
lap. She threaded her needle afresh, rubbed her weary eyes, and
began--when, lo! a miracle.
Instead of one hand, there were four at work--four hands, four
needles, four lines of thread. _The four marguerites were all being
embroidered at the same time!_ The piskies had forgiven, had
remembered her at last, after these many years, and were coming to
her help, as of old.
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