"I am sorry to have inconvenienced you, Miss Lu," she said, "but I'll try not to keep you so very long." "If you don't, it will be about the first time that you haven't," snapped Lulu.

"I think you are just about the slowest, most blundering dressmaker I ever did see." At that unkind remark, Alma's eyes filled with tears, but she went on silently with her work, making no rejoinder, while Lulu--the reproaches of conscience rendering her uneasy and irritable--fidgetted and fussed, thus greatly increasing the difficulty of the task.
"Miss Lu," Alma said at last, in a despairing tone, "if you can't keep stiller, it is not possible for me to make the dress to fit you right." "Indeed!" returned Lulu scornfully, "I don't feel sure of your ability to fit it right under any circumstances--such a stupid, awkward thing as you are, and----" Her sentence was left unfinished, for at that instant, to her astonishment and dismay, her father's voice called to her from his dressing-room, in sterner accents than she had heard from him in a long while.

"Lucilla, come here to me!" She had not known of his detention at home, but supposed he had gone with the others to Ion.
Jerking off the waist, which Alma had already unfastened,--snatching up a dressing-sack and putting it on as she went,--she appeared before him, blushing and shamefaced.
"I am both surprised and mortified by what I have just overheard," he said.

"I had a better opinion of my dear, eldest daughter than to suppose she would ever show herself so heartless.

You surely must have forgotten that poor Alma is a stranger, in a strange land, while you are at home, in your father's house.