“She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness.”
That is, Delina did some work as a seamstress so she wouldn’t have to live off her father.
-- Amanda McKittrick Ros, in the novel Delina Delaney, as quoted by Mark O’Connell’s Epic Fail, which highlights Amanda McKittrick Ros as the Worst Novelist in History