Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/78

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Side Talks with Girls

ings happened to be lace or silk ones it might be worth while, but the general stocking doesn't cost over a dollar a pair, and it is really cheaper to buy new ones than be bothered by a strange woman coming in to mend the old ones. To the woman who can mend, but who cannot remake, I would suggest that a dollar a day and her board is quite enough for her; and when I say her board, I mean two meals, her breakfast and the midday one. She should learn as rapidly as possible where the family for whom she works keeps the undarned stockings, the torn skirts, the worn linen, and the shoes without buttons. And she should induce her employer to purchase and keep for her a mending-basket, in which to keep the different threads, the buttons and the tapes, the hooks and eyes, and different-sized needles, so that when it is desired the implement is to hand. Once she has the reputation of being a good mender, and an honest one, her services will be called for once a week in different families, and if she is agreeable—and unless she is no woman will succeed in any business—her patrons will soon become her friends, eager and anxious to advance her interests. In Paris, the city of great luxury and great economy, your laundress can always recommend a mender to you, so that the forlorn bachelor is cared for, and though he may never see the woman who looks after his belongings, still he gladly pays the laundress for