At which all the white teeth simultaneously lightened from the black
visages, while the subject of this equivocal commendation sat with
infantine solemnity (the profoundest, I think, that the human countenance
is capable of), surveying her sable dependants with imperturbable gravity.

Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once
possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be
called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women. My education
in France--where, in some important respects, I think girls are better
trained than with us--had sent me home to England, at sixteen, an adept in
the female mystery of needlework. Not only owing to the Saturday's
discipline of clothes mending by all the classes--while l'Abbé Millot's
history (of blessed, boring memory) was being read aloud, to prevent 'vain
babblings,' and ensure wholesome mental occupation the while--was I an
expert patcher and mender, darner and piecer (darning and marking were my
specialities), but the white cotton embroidery of which every French woman
has always a piece under her hand _pour les momens perdus_, which are thus
anything but _perdus_, was as familiar to us as to the Irish cottagers of
the present day, and cutting out and making my dresses was among the more
advanced branches of _the_ female accomplishment to which I attained.[1]
The luxury of a lady's maid of my own, indulged in ever since the days of
my 'coming out,' has naturally enough caused my right hand to forget its
cunning, and regret and shame at having lost any useful lore in my life
made me accede, for my own sake, to the request of one of our
multitudinous Dianas and innumerable Chloes to cut out dresses for each of
them, especially as they (wonderful to relate) declared themselves able to
stitch them if I would do the cutting. Since I have been on the plantation
I have already spent considerable time in what the French call
'confectioning' baby bundles, i.e. the rough and very simple tiny