"By nippin' an' tuckin' an' pinchin', an' Elmira goin' without things that girls of her age ought to have." "I don't complain, mother," said Elmira, with a sweet, bright glance at her brother, as she gave a nervous jerk of her slender arm and drew the waxed thread through the shoe she was binding.
"You'd ought to complain, if you don't," returned her mother.

Then she added, with an air of severe mystery, "It might make a difference in your whole life if you did have more; sometimes it does with girls." Jerome did not say anything, but he looked in a troubled way from his sister to his mother and back again.

Elmira blushed hotly, and he could not understand why.
It was very early in a spring morning, not an hour after dawn, but they had eaten breakfast and were hurrying to finish closing and binding a lot of shoes for Jerome to take to his uncle's for finishing.

They all worked smartly, and nothing more was said, but Ann Edwards had an air of having conclusively established the subject rather than dropped it.

Jerome kept stealing troubled glances at his sister's pretty face.