Dress Parade

"Celia had not spent her afternoon at the parade. Instead, she had been in her small, cold, back bedroom on the third story, attending to various worn garments which needed mending. They had been spread out on the bed in a row, and she had gone steadily down the line putting a few stitches here, a button there and setting in a patch in another, counting every minute of daylight hoping to finish her work before it faded, for the gas in her room was dim, the burner being old and worn out. She tried to be cheerful over the work. She called it her 'dress parade.' She knew it was the best way in which to accomplish as much as she wished to do."

A Daily Rate by Grace Livingston Hill