Before I could remonstrate, Jack was knocking at the door.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Lining.

Miss Margery has been making a dress, and she's got into a muddle with the gores.

Now, how do you manage with gores, Miss Lining ?" Jack confidentially inquired, taking his hat off, and accepting a well-dusted chair.
There was now nothing for it but to explain my difficulties, which I did, Miss Lining saying, "Yisss, misss," at every two or three words.
When I had said my say, she sucked the top of her brass thimble thoughtfully for some moments, and then spoke as an oracle.
"There's a hinside and a hout to the stuff?
Yisss, misss.

And a hup and a down?
Yisss, misss." "And quite half the gores won't fit in anywhere," I desperately interposed.
Miss Lining took another taste of the brass thimble, and then said: "In course, misss, with a patterned thing there's as many gores to throw hout as to huse.

Yisss, misss." "_Are there ?_" said I."But what a waste!" "Ho no, misss! you cuts the body out of the gores you throws hout, misss----" "Well, if you get the body out of them, there must be a waist!" Jack broke in, as he sat fondling Miss Lining's tom-cat.
"Ho no, sir!" said Miss Lining, who couldn't have seen a joke to save her dignity.