it will take me all the day to alter it:  the bow is on the wrong side, and the trimming on the edge is too broad.  It is very tiresome to spend all one’s life in altering things we pay so much for.”  “I wish,” said a little girl at the end of the table, “that I might work some trimmings for my frock, but I am obliged to do this plain work first.  The poor lame girl in the village, who is almost starving, would do it for me for a shilling, but I must save my allowance this week to buy a French trinket I have taken a fancy to.”  “Poor thing! she is much to be pitied,” said the lady of the trimming; “if I had time, I would make her some clothes.”

And so they worked, and so they talked, till I and the time-piece had counted many an hour which they took no account of, when one of them yawned, and said, “How tedious are these wet days; it is really impossible to spin out one’s time without a walk.”  “I am surprised you find it so,” rejoined the lady of the beads; “I can rarely take time for walking, though keeping the house makes me miserably languid.”

And so the morning passed.  It was nearly two o’clock, and the company dispersed to their apartments.  I pretend not to know what they did there; but each one returned between three and four in an altered dress.  And then half an hour elapsed, in which, as I understood from their impatience, they were waiting for dinner; each in turn complaining of the waste of time occasioned by its delay, and the little use it would be to go about any thing when it was so near.  And as soon as dinner was over, they began to wait for tea with exactly the same complainings.  And the tea came, and, cheered by the vivifying draught, one did repair to the instrument, and began a tune; one did take up a pencil, and prepare to draw; and one almost opened a book.  But, alas! the shades of night were growing fast:—­ten minutes had scarcely elapsed, before each one resigned her occupation, with a murmur at the darkness of the weather; and, though some persons suggested that there were such things as lamps and candles, it was agreed to be a pity to have lights so early in the midst of summer, and so another half hour escaped.

The lights, when they came, would have failed to relumine an expectation in my bosom, had not their beams disclosed the forms of various books, which one and another had brought in for the evening’s amusement.  Again I watched and again I listened.  “I wish I had something to do, mamma,” said the little girl.  “Why do you not take a book, and read?” rejoined her mother.  “My books are all up stairs,” she replied; “and it is so near bedtime, it is not worth while to bring them down.”  “This is the best novel I ever read,” said a lady, somewhat older, turning the leaves over so very fast, that those who are not used to this manner of reading, might suppose she found nothing in it worthy of attention.  “I dare say it is,” said another, whose eyes had been fixed for half an hour on the same page of Wordsworth’s Poems; “but I have no time to read novels.”  “I wish I had time to read any thing,” said a third, whom I had observed already to have been perusing attentively the title-page of every book on the table, publisher’s name, date, and all; while a fourth was too intensely engaged in studying the blue cover of a magazine, to make any remark whatever.