JUST LIKE AUNT BANGER. 125

struction of her sentence) “ than you do like creatures of re-
fined sense. I say refined sense. Common sense I leave out
of the reckoning altogether.”’

“ But we must be in the fashion,” pleaded Trim, as Aunt
Banger paused to catch her breath.

“1 derather sew myself into a rag-bag, than go round look-
ing as if I came out of the ark!” said Rye, hotly. She felt
her ruffles rolling away over the billows of breadths. She
had begun in her mind with the modest number of five. If
she asked for three now, she knew that she should do it in
the teeth of Fate.

“ Not to speak of the money,” proceeded Aunt Banger
(when she at once fairly begun it was next to impossible to
stop her),—‘“ not to Say one syllable of the money — ten,
twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty, nobody knows how many more
dollars, but those that have got to settle the Lord’s and the
dress-maker’s bills for it — for work and material of trimming
a single dress, and the Indians starving to death on Lake
Superior.”

“What have the Indians to do with it?” put in Trim with
an air of high personal culture.

“Not to say a word of Indians,” cofitinued the old lady,
“nor any other folks that can’t afford ruffles, nor the wicked,
awful waste, nor the Last Trump, nor anything but the pretty
of it: it ist pretty! These rigs are not in faste, girls;
they ’re not lddylike; they ’re not neat; they ’re not grace-
ful by any laws of God or man. There is n’t an artist in the