Tea and mending

"So then Arthur settled to his law work and I to my 'parlour work'. We gave this name to any kind of sewing, from a story of my mother's. She had invited an old servant to come for tea, and the reply was: 'thank you, mam, I'll come when I have a bit of parlour work that I can bring.' When she came she brought a pair of her husband's trousers to mend."

A London Family 1870 - 1900, A Trilogy by M. Vivian Hughes, Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, London, New York, Toronto 1946, p.555