hadn't enough clothes to cover herself might
have something to do with her untiring inter-
est in dressing the human figure. Her clients
said that Lena "had style," and overlooked
her habitual inaccuracies. She never, I dis-
covered, finished anything by the time she
had promised, and she frequently spent more
money on materials than her customer had
authorized. Once, when I arrived at six
o'clock, Lena was ushering out a fidgety
mother and her awkward, overgrown daugh-
ter. The woman detained Lena at the door
to say apologetically: --

"You'll try to keep it under fifty for me,
won't you, Miss Lingard? You see, she's
really too young to come to an expensive
dressmaker, but I knew you could do more
with her than anybody else."

"Oh, that will be all right, Mrs. Herron.
I think we'll manage to get a good effect,"
Lena replied blandly.

I thought her manner with her customers
very good, and wondered where she had
learned such self-possession.

Sometimes after my morning classes were
over, I used to encounter Lena downtown,
in her velvet suit and a little black hat, with

[[316]]

p315 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p316w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p317

v?