sponsor.

"I sure am glad you have come down, Nancy," said Mrs. Addcock, with almost
a moan; "that Mamie there won't let me turn up the hem of her dress without
you, though I say what is a hem to a woman who has set in six pairs of
sleeves since day before yesterday!"

"I want shoe-tops and Ma wants ankles," sniffed Mamie Addcock. "Polly
Beesley wears shoe-tops and she's seventeen and goes to the city to dance.
And Miss Bess' and yours are shoe-tops, too."

"Now you see what it is to raise a child to be led into sin and vanity,"
said Mrs. Addcock, looking at me reproachfully from her seat upon the floor
at the feet of the worldly Mamie.

"I'll turn up the hem just right, Mrs. Addcock, while you get the collars
on little Sammie's and Willie's shirts," I said soothingly as I sank down
beside her at Mamie's feet.

"I had to cut Sammie's shirt with a tail to tuck in, all on account of that
Mr. Matthew Berry's telling him that shirt and pants ought to do business
together. And there's Willie's jeans pants got to have pockets for the
knife that Mr. Owen gave him. I just can't keep up with these city notions
of my children with five of 'em and a weak back." As she grumbled Mrs.
Addcock rose slowly from her lowly position to her feet.

"I'll make Willie's trousers, Mrs. Addcock, this afternoon, if he'll come
and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest," I offered, with my mouth
full of pins.