So they worked at the new frocks together: Aileen patient in explaining, and swift at planning, while ’Possum grasped her needle as if it were a bradawl, and drove it through the stuff with much muscular effort, producing stitches of a size truly majestic.  "Blest if I can handle the silly little thing!" said she, laboriously unpicking: "ploughin’s a jolly sight easier!"  But in time her natural deftness came to her aid, and when Aileen had succeeded in making her forget the methods by which she had "clamped" together the garments of her family, and inducing her to use a needle less thick than a skewer, she arrived at creditable results.  The finished pile of dresses contained plenty of her work, and she gloated over them proudly, though most of her pride was reserved for the frocks for the little girls, and the cool suits for the boys, that had been "managed" out of the stock of material.