Letter to a Little Princess
Dear Princess,
There is a very important thing I wish to tell you. It is something that Princess Precious learned the hard way, so perhaps you can pay attention and learn from her mistake.
It was sewing day in the palace school and all the princesses were working on making baby outfits. “I’m going to give mine to my new cousin,” said Precious, stroking the fuzzy soft blue and white fabric. “Isn’t it going to be cute?”
Mother Matron smiled. “You are doing a very good job,” she said. “If you do as well with the sleeves and hood it will be a lovely present.” Precious bent to her work with a smile. Of course she would do a good job! She wasn’t a beginning sewer anymore—not after sewing a doll blanket all by herself.
Mother Matron was busy with Princess Joy when Precious finished her hemming. “It will be awhile before she can help me,” Precious thought. “I’ll just work on the next part by myself.” The pieces of fabric were stacked neatly. Precious took the top piece and looked at it carefully. “This looks like a sleeve, I’ll gather the end like I saw Princess Carefulness do.”
Precious felt very pleased with herself when she had finished the sleeve. “I don’t think I need Mother Matron’s help at all,” she said, and began working on the other sleeve. In and out her needle went through the soft fabric. “It will be a surprise to show her how much I’ve done,” Precious thought as she held up her work. The fabric didn’t meet at the edge, but a quick scissors snip took care of that.
Class was over and Princess Carefulness stopped by. “How does it look?” asked Precious with a smile.
Carefulness looked puzzled. “Isn’t that sleeve a little different from the other one?”
“I think it looks quite all right,” Precious said quickly. Carefulness was probably just jealous of her.
Precious folded the gown and took it up to Mother Matron for inspection. As she saw how far behind the others were, she smiled. But her self-confidence didn’t last long.
When Precious handed in her work, Mother Matron opened her mouth in surprise. “Why, dear! How is it that you put the sleeves on without me?”
“Don’t they look nice?”
“No, I’m afraid not. You have sewed them up wrong—and this one is shorter than the other one. What did you do to it?”
“I cut the end off to make it straight,” Precious said in a small voice.
“The only thing is to take them off and cut new ones.” Mother Matron sighed. “I don’t believe we have any blue check left. You’ll have to use white.”
“But it won’t look very nice,” Precious said, blinking back tears.
“No, but perhaps it will help you learn an important lesson, Precious. When you think you know everything, that is the time when you most certainly don’t.” So it was that a sorry princess found out that undoing mistakes is much harder than doing it right in the beginning.
With love,
Aunt Faith
