“What trouble you are taking!” cried Kirsteen. “And it’s not as if it were silk or velvet but just a muslin gown.”
Miss Macnab looked up from where she knelt by Mary’s knee. She had to take the pins out of her mouth before she could speak, which was inconvenient, for no pincushion is ever so handy. “Missie,” she said, “my dear, ye just show your ignorance: for there’s nothing so hard to take a good set as a fine muslin; and the maist difficult is aye the maist particular, as ye would soon learn if ye gave yoursel’ to any airt.”
Kirsteen, who knew very little of any art, but thought it meant painting pictures, here gave vent, to her own shame afterwards, to a little laugh, and said hastily, “I would just set it straight and sew it up again if it was me.”
“I have no objection that ye should try,” said Miss Macnab, rising from her knees, “it’s aye the best lesson. When I was in a lairger way of business, with young ones working under me, I aye let them try their ain way; and maistly I found they were well content after to turn to mine--that is if they were worth the learning,” she added composedly; “there are many that are just a waste of time and pains.”
“And these are the ones that take their own way? But if I were to take mine I would never yield, I would make it answer,” said Kirsteen. She added with a blush, “I just cannot think enough of all your trouble and the pains ye take.”
Miss Macnab gave the blushing girl a friendly look. She had again her mouth full, so that speech was impossible, but she nodded kindly and with dignity in return for this little burst of approval which she knew to be her due; and it was with all the confidence of conscious merit and a benign condescension that she expounded her methods afterwards. “If ye dinna get the skirt to fall straight from the waist, ye will never mend it at the foot,” she said. “I can see you’re ane that can comprehend a principle, my bonnie missie. Take a’ the trouble ye can at the beginning, and the end will come right of itsel’. A careless start means a double vexation in the finish. And that ye’ll find to apply,” said this mild philosopher, “to life itsel’ as well as to the dressmaking, which is just like a’ the airts I ever heard tell of, a kind of epitome of life.”