The little dressmaker

The story is too valuable to be found online, too long to transcribe, too marvelous to miss. 'The Little Dressmaker', a little tale from a collection by Eleanor Farjeon titled 'The Little Bookroom' (1955).
'Seven maids with seven brooms,' wrote Farjeon in the preface, 'sweeping for half-a-hundred years, have never managed to clear my mind of its dust, of vanished tamples and flowers and kings, the curls of ladies, the sighing of poets, the laughter of lads and girls: those golden ones who, like chimney-sweepers, must all come to dust in some little bookroom or other - and sometimes, by luck, come again for a moment to light.'