Arabel Waite was an old dressmaker.  She could make two skirts to a dress, one shorter, the other longer; and she could cut out the upper one by any new paper pattern; and she could make shell-trimmings and flutings and box-plaitings and flouncings, and sew them on exquisitely, even now, with her old eyes; but she never had adapted herself to the modern ideas of the corsage.  She could not fit a bias to save her life; she could only stitch up a straight slant, and leave the rest to nature and fate.  So all her people had the squarest of wooden fronts, and were preternaturally large around the waist.  Delia sewed with her, abroad and at home,—­abroad without her, also, as she was doing now for us.  A pattern for a sleeve, or a cape, or a panier,—­or a receipt for a tea-biscuit or a johnny-cake, was something to go home with rejoicing.

Arabel Waite and Delia could only use three rooms of the old house; the rest was blinded and shut up; the garret was given over to the squirrels, who came in from the great butternut-trees in the yard, and stowed away their rich provision under the eaves and away down between the walls, and grew fat there all winter, and frolicked like a troop of horse.  We liked to hear Delia tell of their pranks, and of all the other queer, quaint things in their way of living.  Everybody has a way of living; and if you can get into it, every one is as good as a story.  It always seemed to us as if Delia brought with her the atmosphere of mysterious old houses, and old, old books stowed away in their by-places, and stories of the far past that had been lived there, and curious ancient garments done with long ago, and packed into trunks and bureaus in the dark, unused rooms, where there had been parties once, and weddings and funerals and children’s games in nurseries; and strange fellowship of little wild things that strayed in now,—­bees in summer, and squirrels in winter,—­and brought the woods and fields with them under the old roof.  Why, I think we should have missed it more than she would, if we had put her into some back room, and poked her sewing in at her, and left her to herself!

The only thing that wasn’t nice that week was Aunt Roderick coming over one morning in the very thick of our work, and Lucilla’s too, walking straight up stairs, as aunts can, whether you want them or not, and standing astonished at the great goings-on.

“Well!” she exclaimed, with a strong falling inflection, “are any of you getting ready to be married?”

“Yes’m,” said Barbara, gravely, handing her a chair.  “All of us.”

Then Barbara made rather an unnecessary parade of ribbon that she was quilling up, and of black lace that was to go each side of it upon a little round jacket for her blue silk dress, made of a piece laid away five years ago, when she first had it.  The skirt was turned now, and the waist was gone.

While Aunt Roderick was there, she also took occasion to toss over, more or less, everything that lay about,—­“to help her in her inventory,” she said after she went away.