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Gale Zona
Peace in Friendship Village

Mis' Holcomb just giggled out.

"It's a fact," she says. "We thought we'd come while you was here, for an excuse. But we were just sick of home, and that's the truth."

I looked at them, stupefied, or part that. Mis' Toplady and Mame, that's been examples of married contentment for thirty years on end, hand-running! It begun to dawn on me, slow, what this meant, as Mis' Toplady begun to tell me about it.

"You know, Calliope," she says, "the very best home in the world gets – "

Then I jumped up. "Hold on," I says. "You wait a minute. I'll be straight back again."

I run down the hall to the bedroom where Ellen was. She was just laying the baby down – even in my hurry I stopped to think what a heavenly and eternal picture that makes – a mother laying a baby down. There's something in the stooping of her shoulders and the sweep of her skirt and the tender drooping of her face, with the lamp-light on her hair, that makes a picture out of every time a baby is laid in his bed. The very fact that Ellen looked so lovely that way made me all the more anxious to save her.

"Ellen," I says, "come out here, please."

I pulled her along, with her hair all loose and lovely about her face – Ellen was a perfect picture of somebody's wife and a little baby's mother. You never in the world would have thought of her as a human being besides.

So then I introduced them, and I sat down there with them – the two I knew so well, and the one I'd got to know so well so sudden. And two of them were nearly sixty, and one was not much past twenty; but the three of them had so much in common that they were almost like one person sitting there with me, before the fire.

"Now," says I, "Mis' Toplady, go ahead. You needn't mind Ellen. She'll understand."

After a little bit, Mis' Toplady did go ahead.

"Well, sir," Mis' Toplady said, "I dunno what you'll think of us, but this is the way it was. I was sitting home by the dining-room table with Timothy night before last. We had a real good wood fire in the stove, and a tin of apples baking in the top, that smelled good. And the lamp had been filled that day, so the light was extra bright. And there was a little green wood in the fire that sort of sung – and Timothy set with his shoes off, as he so often does evenings, reading his newspaper and warming his stocking feet on the nickel of the stove. And all of a sudden I looked around at my dining-room, the way I'd looked at it evenings for thirty years or more, ever since we went to housekeeping, and I says to myself, 'I hate the sight of you, and I wish't I was somewheres else.' Not that I do hate it, you know, of course – but it just come over me, like it has before. And as soon as my tin of apples was done and I took them into the kitchen, I grabbed my shawl down off the hook, and run over to Mis' Holcomb's. And when I shut her gate, I near jumped back, because there, poking round her garden in the snow in the dark, was Mame!

"So," Mis' Toplady continued, "we hung over the gate and talked about it. And we came to the solemn conclusion that we'd just up and light out for twenty-four hours. We told our husbands, and they took it philosophic. Men understand a whole lot more than you give them credit for. They know – if they're any real good – that it ain't that you ain't fond of them, or that you ain't thankful you're their wife, but that you've just got to have things that's different and interesting and – and tellable. Anyhow, that's the way Mame and I figgered it out. And we got into our good clothes, and we came up to the city, and went to the hotel, and got us a bowl of hot oyster soup apiece. And then we had the street-car ride out here, and we'll have another going back. And we've seen you. And we'll have a walk past the store windows in the morning before train-time. And I bet when we get home, 'long towards night, our two dining-rooms'll look real good to us again – don't you, Mame?"

"Yes, sir!" Mame says, with her little laugh again. "And our husbands, too!"

I'd been listening to them – but I'd been watching Ellen. Ellen was one of the women that aren't deceived by outside appearances, same as some. Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb didn't look any more like her city friends than a cat's tail looks like a plume, but just the same Ellen saw what they were and what they were worth. And when they got done:

"Do you mean you are going back to-morrow?" she says.

"Noon train," says Mame, "and be home in time to cook supper as natural as life and as good as new."

Ellen kept looking at them, and I guessed what she was thinking: A hundred miles they'd come for a change, and all they'd got was two street-car rides and a bowl of oyster soup apiece and this call, and they were going home satisfied.

All of a sudden Ellen sat up straight in her chair.

"See," she says, "it's only eight o'clock. Why can't the four of us go to the theater?"

The two women sort of gasped, in two hitches.

"Us?" they says.

Ellen jumped up. "Quick, Calliope," she says. "Get your things on. Delia can stay with the baby. I'll telephone for a taxi. We can decide what to see on the way down. You'll go, won't you?" she asks 'em.

"Go!" says they, in one breath. "Oh – yes, sir!"

In no time, or thereabouts, we found ourselves down-stairs packing into the taxicab. I was just as much excited as anybody – I hadn't been to a play in years. Ellen told us what there was as we went down, but they might have been the names of French cooking for all they meant to us, and we left it to her to pick out where we were to go.

When we followed her down the aisle of the one she picked out, just after the curtain went up, where do you think she took us? Into a box! It was so dark that Mis' Toplady and Mame never noticed until the curtain went down, and the lights came up, and we looked round.

As for me, I could hardly listen to the play. I was thinking of these two dear women from the village, and what it meant to them to have something different to do. But even more, I was watching Ellen, that had set out to make them have a good time, and was doing her best at it, getting them to talk and making them laugh, when the curtain was down. But when the curtain was up, it seemed to me that Ellen wasn't listening to the play so very much, either.

Before the last act, Ellen had to get back to the baby, so we left the two of them there and went home.

"Alone in the box!" says Mame Holcomb, as we were leaving. "My land, and my hat's trimmed on the wrong side for the audience!"

"Do we have to go when it's out?" says Mis' Toplady. "Won't they just leave us set here, on – and on – and on?"

I remember them as I looked back and saw them, sitting there together. And something, I dunno whether it was the wedding-trip poplin dress, or the thought of the two dining-rooms where they'd set for so long, or of the little lark they'd planned, sort of made a lump come and meet a word I was trying to say.

We'd got out to the entry of the box, when somebody came after us, and it was little bit of Mame Holcomb, looking up with eyes bright as a blue jay's at the feed-dish.

"Oh," she says to Ellen, "I ain't half told you – neither of us has – what this means to us. And I wanted you to know – we both of us do – that the best part is, you so sort of understood."

Ellen just bent over and kissed her. And when we came out in the hall, all light and red carpet, I see Ellen's eyes were full of tears.

And when we got in the taxicab: "Ellen," I says, "I thank you, too – ever so much. You did understand. So did I."

"I don't know – I don't know," she says "But, Calliope, how in the world do you understand that kind of thing?"

So I said it, right out plain:

"Oh," I says, "I guess sheer because I've seen so much unhappiness, and on up to divorce, come about sole because married folks will hunt in couples perpetual, and not let themselves be just folks."

When we got home – and we hadn't said much more all the way there – as we opened the living-room door, I saw that we'd got there first, before Russell. I was glad of that. Ellen ran right down the hall to the baby's room, and I took off my things and went down to the end of the room where the couch was, to lay down till she came back.

I must have dozed off, because I didn't hear Russell come in. The first I knew, he was standing with his back to the fire, filling his pipe. So I looked in his face, when he didn't know anybody was looking.

He had evidently walked home, and had come in fresh and glowing and full of frosty air, and his cheeks were ruddy. He was smiling a little at something or other, and altogether he looked not a bit like the tired man that had come home that night to dinner.

Then I heard the farther door click, and Ellen's step in the hall.

He looked toward the door, and I saw the queerest expression come in his face. Now, there was Russell, a man of twenty-seven or eight, a grown man that had lived his independent life for years before he had married Ellen. And yet, honestly, when he looked up then, his face and his eyes were like those of a boy that had done something that he had been scolded for. He looked kind of apologetic and explanatory – a look no man ought to be required to look unless for a real reason. It seems so – ignominious for a human being to have to look like that when they hadn't done a thing wrong.

My heart sank some. I thought of the way Ellen had been all slumped down in that easy chair, crying and taking on. And I waited for her to come in, feeling as if all the law and the prophets hung on the next few minutes – and I guess they did.

She'd put on a little, soft house-dress, made you-couldn't-tell-how, of lace, with blue showing through, kind of like clouds and the sky. But it was her face I looked at, because I remembered the set look it had when she'd told Russell good-by. And when I see her face now there in all that sky-and-clouds effect, honest, it was like a star.

"Hello, dear," she says, kind of sweet and casual, "put a stick of wood on the fire and tell me all about it."

I tell you, my heart jumped up then as much as it would of if I'd heard her say "I will" when they were married. For this was their new minute.

"Sit here," he says, and pulled her down to the big chair, and sat on the low chair beside her, where I'd seen him first. Only now, the baby wasn't there – it was just the two of them.

"Did you beat them all to pieces?" she asks, still with that blessed, casual, natural way of hers.

He smiled, sort of pleased and proud and humble. "I did," he owns up. "You're my wife, and I can brag to you if I want to. I walloped 'em."

He told her about the game, saying a lot of things that didn't mean a thing to me, but that must have meant to her what they meant to him, because she laughed out, pleased.

"Good!" she says. "You play a corking game, if I do say it. Do you know, you look a lot better than you did when you came home to dinner? I hate to see you look tired like that."

"I feel fit as a fish now," says he. "There's something about an evening like that with half a dozen of 'em – it isn't the game. It's the – oh, I don't know. But it kind of – "

He petered off, and she didn't make the mistake of agreeing too hard or talking about it too long. She just nodded, and pretty soon she told him some little thing about the baby. When he emptied his pipe, she said she thought she'd go to bed.

But when she got up, he reached up and pulled her back in the chair again, and moved so that he set with his cheek against hers. And he says:

"I've got something to tell you."

She picked up his hand to lean her head on, and says, "What? Me?" – which I'd noticed was one of the little family jokes, that no family should be without a set of.

"Do you know, Ellen," he said, "to-night, when I went out to go over to Beldon's, I thought you didn't like my going."

"You did?" she says. "What made you think that?"

"The way you spoke – or looked – or kissed me. I don't know. I imagined it, I guess," says he. "And – I've got something to own up."

She just waited; and he said it out, blunt:

"It made me not want to come home," says he.

"Not want to come home?" she says over, startled.

He nodded. "Lacy and Bright both left Beldon's before I did," he says. "I thought probably – I don't know. I imagined you were going to be polite as the deuce, the way I thought you were when I went out."

"Oh," she says, "was I that?"

"So when Lacy and Bright made jokes about what their wives'd say if they didn't get home, I joined in with them, and laughed at the 'apron strings.' That's what we called it."

She moved a little away. "Did you do that?" she said. "Oh, Russell, I should hate that. I should think any woman would hate it."

"I know," he says. "I'm dead sorry. But I wanted you to know. And, dear – "

He got up and stood before her, with her hands crushed up in his.

"I want you to know," he says, kind of solemn, "that the way you are about this makes me – gladder than the dickens. Not for the reason you might think – because it's going to make it easy to be away when I want to. But because – "

He didn't say things very easy. Most men don't, except for their little bit of courting time.

"Well, thunder," he said, "don't you see? It makes me so sure you're my wife– and not just married to me."

She smiled up at him without saying anything, but I knew how balm and oil were curing the hurt that she thought she'd had that night when he went out.

"I've always thought of our each doing things – and coming home and telling each other about them," he says, vague.

"Of my doing things, too?" she asks, quick.

"Why, yes – sure. You, of course," he says, emphatic. "Haven't you seen that I want you to do things sometimes, without me tagging on?"

"Is that the way you look at it?" she says, slow.

He gave her two hands a gay little jerk, and pulled her to her feet.

"Why," he said, "you're a person. And I'm a person. If we really love each other, being married isn't only something instead. It's something plus."

"Russell," she says, "how did you find that out?"

"I don't know," he says. "How does anybody find out anything?"

I'll never forget the way Ellen looked when she went close to him.

"By loving somebody enough, I think," she says.

That made him stop short to wonder about something.

"How did you find out, if it comes to that?" he asks.

"What? Me?" she says. "Oh, I found out – by special messenger!"

Think of Mis' Toplady and Mame being that, unbeknownst!

They turned away together, and walked down the room. The fire had burned down, and everything acted like eleven-o'clock-at-night. It made a nice minute. I like to think about it.

"To-morrow morning," she told him, "I'm going to take Calliope and two friends of hers to the dog show. And you – don't – have – to – come. But you're invited, you know."

He laughed like a boy.

"Well, now, maybe I can drop in!" says he.

THE ART AND LOAN DRESS EXHIBIT ⁶

"We could have a baking sale. Or a general cooking sale. Or a bazaar. Or a twenty-five-cent supper," says I.

Mis' Toplady tore off a strip of white cloth so smart it sounded saucy.

"I'm sick to death," she said, "of the whole kit of them. I hate a baking sale like I hate wash-day. We've had them till we can taste them. I know just what every human one of us would bring. Bazaars is death on your feet. And if I sit down to another twenty-five-cent supper – beef loaf, bake' beans, pickles, cabbage salad, piece o' cake – it seems as though I should scream."

"Me too," agrees Mis' Holcomb.

"Me too," I says myself. "Still," I says, "we want a park – and we want to name it Hewitt Park for them that's done so much for the town a'ready. And if we ever have a park, we've got to raise some money. That's flat, ain't it?"

We all allowed that this was flat, and acrost the certainty we faced one another, rocking and sewing in my nice cool sitting-room. The blinds were open, the muslin curtains were blowing, bees were humming in the yellow-rose bush over the window, and the street lay all empty, except for a load of hay that lumbered by and brushed the low branches of the maples. And somewheres down the block a lawn-mower was going, sleepy.

"Who's that rackin' around so up-stairs?" ask' Mis' Toplady, pretty soon.

Just when she spoke, the little light footstep that had been padding overhead came out in the hall and down my stair.

"It's Miss Mayhew," I told them, just before Miss Mayhew tapped on the open door.

"Come right in – what you knocking for when the door sets ajar?" says I to her.

Miss Mayhew stood in the doorway, her rough short skirt and stout boots and red sweater all saying "I'm going for a walk," even before she did. Only she adds: "I wanted to let you know I don't think I'll get back for supper."

"Such a boarder I never saw," I says. "You don't eat enough for a bird when you're here. And when you ain't, you're off gallivanting over the hills with nothing whatever to eat. And me with a fresh spice-cake just out of the oven for your supper."

"I'm so sorry," Miss Mayhew says, penitent to see.

I laid down my work. "You let me put you up a couple o' pieces to nibble on," says I.

"You're so good. May I come too?" Miss Mayhew asks, and smiled bright at the other two women, who smiled back broad and almost tender – Miss Mayhew's smile made you do that.

"I s'pose them writing folks can't stop to think of food," Mis' Toplady says as we went out.

"Look at her lugging a book. What's she want to be bothered with that for?" Mis' Holcomb says.

But that kind of fault-finding don't necessarily mean unkindness. With us it was as natural as a glance.

Out in the kitchen, I, having wrapped two nice slices of spice cake and put them in Miss Mayhew's hand, looked up at her and was shook up considerable to see that her eyes were filled with tears.

I know I'm real blunt when I'm embarrassed or trying to be funny, but when it comes to tears I'm more to home. So I just put my hand on the girl's shoulder and waited for her to speak.

"It's nothing," Miss Mayhew says back to the question I didn't ask. "I – I – " she sobbed out quite open. "I'm all right," she ends, and put up her head like a banner.

To the two women in my sitting-room I didn't say a word of that moment, when I went back to them. But what I did say acted kind of electric.

"Now," says I, "day before yesterday was my sweeping day for the chambers. But I hated to disturb her, she set there scribbling so hard when I stuck my head in. She ain't been out of the house since. If you'll excuse me, I'll whisk right up there and sweep out now."

The women begun folding their work.

"Why, don't hurry yourselves!" I says. "Sit and visit till I get through, why don't you?"

"Go!" says Mis' Toplady. "We ain't a-going. We're going to help."

"I been dying to get up-stairs in that room ever since I see her fix it up," Miss Holcomb lets out, candid.

Miss Mayhew's room – she'd been renting my front chamber for a month now – was little and bare, but her daintiness was there, like her saying something. And the two women began looking things over – the books, the pictures – "prints," Miss Mayhew called them – the china tea-cups, the silver-topped bottles, and the silver and ivory toilet stuff.

"My, what a homely picture!" Mis' Holcomb says, looking at a scene of a Japanese lady and a mountain.

"What in the world is these forceps for?" says Mis' Toplady, balancing an ivory glove-stretcher with Miss Mayhew's initials on. I knew that it was, because I'd asked her.

"What she wants of a dust-cap I dunno," Mis' Holcomb contributes, pointing to the little lace and ribbon cap hanging beside the toilet-table.

And I'd wondered that myself. She put it on for breakfast, like she was going to do some work; then she never done a thing the whole morning, only wrote.

Then all of a sudden was when I come out with something surprising.

"Why," says I, "it's gone!"

"What's gone?" they says. And I was looking so hard I couldn't answer – bureau, chest of drawers, bookshelves, I looked on all of them. "It ain't here anywhere," says I, "and he was that handsome – "

I told them about the photograph, as well as I could. It was always standing on the bureau, right close up by the glass – a man's picture that always made me want to say: "Well, you look just exactly the way you ought to look. And I believe you are it." He looked like what you mean when you say "man" when you're young – big and dark and frank and boyish and manly, with eyes that give their truth to you and count on having yours back again. That kind.

"Land," I says. "I'd leave a picture like that up in my room no matter what occurred between me and the one the picture was the picture of. I couldn't take it down."

But now it was down, though I remembered seeing it stand there every time I'd dusted ever since Miss Mayhew had come, up till this day. And when I'd told the women all about it, they couldn't recover from looking. They looked so energetic that finally Mis' Toplady pulled out the wardrobe a little mite and peeked behind it.

"I thought mebbe it'd got itself stuck in here," she explains, bringing her head back with a great streak of dust on her cheek – and I didn't take it as any reflection whatever on my housekeeping. I've always believed that there's some furniture that the dust just rises out of, in the night, like cream – and of those the backs of wardrobes are chief.

Then she shoved the wardrobe in place, and the door that I'd fixed at the top with a little wob of newspaper so it would stay shut, all of a sudden swung open, and the other one followed suit. We three stood staring at what was inside. For my wardrobe, that had never had anything in it better than my best black silk, was hung full of pink and blue and rose and white and lavender clothes. Dresses they were, some with little scraps of shining trimming on, and all of them not like anything any of us had ever seen, outside of fashion books – if any.

"My land!" says I, sitting down on the edge of the fresh-made bed – a thing I never do in my right senses.

"Party clothes!" says Mis' Holcomb, kind of awelike. "Ball-gowns," she says it over, to make them sound as grand as they looked.

"Why, mercy me," Mis' Toplady says, standing close up and staring. "She's an actress, that's what she is. Them's stage clothes."

"Actress nothing," I says, "nor they ain't ball dresses – not all anyway. They're just light colors, for afternoon wear, the most of them – but like we don't wear here in this town, 'long of being so durable-minded."

"Have you ever seen her wear any of 'em?" demands Mis' Toplady.

"I can't say I ever have," I says, "but she likely ain't done so because she don't want to do different from us. That," says I, "is the lady of it."

Mis' Holcomb leaned close and looked at the things through her glasses.

"I think she'd ought to wear them here," she says. "I'd dearly love to look at things like that. Nobody ever wore things here like that since the Hewitts went away. We'd all love to see them. We don't see things like that any too often. I s'pose – I s'pose, ladies," says she, hesitating, "I s'pose it wouldn't do for us to look at them any closer up to, would it?"

We knew it wouldn't – not, that is, to the point of touching. But we all came and stood by the wardrobe door and looked as close up to as we durst.

"My," says Mis' Toplady, "how Mis' Sykes would admire to see these. And Mis' Hubbelthwait. And Mis' Sturgis. And Mis' Merriman."

And then she went on, real low:

"Why, ladies," she says, "why couldn't we have an exhibit – a loan exhibit? And put all those clothes on dress-makers' forms in somebody's parlor – "

"And charge admission!" says I. "Instead of a bazaar or a supper or a baking sale – "

"And get each lady that's got them to put up her best dress too," says Mis' Holcomb. "Mis' Sykes has never had a chance to wear her navy-blue velvet in this town once, and she's had it three years. I presume she'd be glad to get a chance to show it off that way."

"And Mis' Sturgis her black silk that she had dressmaker made in the city," says I, "when she went to her relation's funeral. She's never had it on her back but the once – it had too much jet on it for anything but formal – and that once was to the funeral, and then it was so cold in the church she had to keep her coat on over it. She's often told me about it, and she's real bitter about it, for her."

Mis' Toplady flushed up. "I've got," she said, "that lavender silk dressing gown my nephew sent me from Japan. It's never been out of its box since it come, nine years ago, except when I've took somebody up-chamber to show it to them. Do you think – "

"Of course we'll have it," I said, "and, Mis' Toplady, your wedding-dress that you've saved, with the white raspberry buttons. And there's Mis' Merriman's silk-embroidered long-shawl – oh, ladies," I says, "won't it be nice to see some elegant clothes wore for once here in the village, even if it's only on dressmaker's forms?"

"So be Miss Mayhew'll only let us take hers," says Mis' Holcomb, longing.

We planned the whole thing out, sitting up there till plump six o'clock when the whistle blew, and not a scratch of sweeping done in the chamber yet. The ladies both flew for home then, and I went at the sweeping, being I was too excited to eat anyway, and I planned like lightning the whole time. And I made up my mind to arrange with Miss Mayhew that night.

I'd had my supper and was rocking on the front porch when she came home. The moon was shining up the street, and the maple leaves were all moving pleasant, and their shadows were moving pleasant, too, as if they were independent. Everybody's windows were open, and somewhere down the block some young folks were singing an old-fashioned love-song – I saw Miss Mayhew stand at the gate and listen after she had come inside. Then she came up the walk slow.

"Good evening and glad you're back," said I. "Ain't this a night?"

She stood on the bottom step, looking the moon in the face. The air was sweet with my yellow roses – it was almost as if the moonlight and they were the same color and both sweet-smelling. And her a picture in that yellow frame.

"Oh, it is – it is," she says, and she sighs.

"This," I says, "isn't a night to sigh on."

"No," she says, "it isn't – is it? I won't do it again."

"Sit down," I says, "I want to ask you something."

So then I told her how her wardrobe door had happened to swing open, and what we wanted to do.

" – we don't see any too many pretty things here in the village," I said, "and I'd kind of like to do it, even if we didn't make a cent of money out of it for the park."

She didn't say anything – she just sat with her head turned away from me, looking down the street.

" – us ladies," I said, "we don't dress very much. We can't. We've all had a hard time to get together just what we've had to have. But we all like pretty things. I s'pose most all of us used to think we were going to have them, and these things of yours kind of make me think of the way I use' to think, when I was a girl, I'd have things some day. Of course now I know it don't make a mite of difference whether anybody ever had them or not – there's other things and more of them. But still, now and then you kind of hanker. You kind of hanker," I told her.

Still she didn't say anything. I thought mebbe I'd offended her.

"We wouldn't touch them, you know," I said. "We'd only just come and look. But if you'd mind it any – "

Then she looked up at me, and I saw that her eyes were brimming over with tears.

"Mind!" she said. "Why, no – no! If you can really use those things of mine. But they're not nice things, you know."

"Well," I says, "I dunno as us ladies would know that. But you do love light things when you've had to go around dressed dark, either 'count of economy or 'count of being afraid of getting talked about. Or both."

She got up and leaned and kissed me, light. Wasn't that a funny thing to do? But I loved her for it.

"Anything I own," she says, "is yours to use just the way you want to use it."

"You're just as sweet as you are pretty," I told her, "and more I dunno who could say about no one."

I lay awake most all night planning it, like you will. I spent most of the next day tracking round seeing folks about it. And everybody pitched in to work, both on account of needing the money for the little park us ladies had set our hearts on, and on account of being glad to have some place, at last, to show what clothes we'd got to some one, even if it was nobody but each other.

"Oh," says Mis' Holcomb, "I was thinking only the other day if only somebody'd get married. You know we ain't had an evening party in this town in years – not since the Hewitts went away. But I couldn't think of a soul likely to have a big evening wedding for their daughter but the Mortons, and little Abbie Morton, she's only 'leven. It'd take another good six years before we could get asked to that. And I did want to get a real chance to wear my dress before I made it over."

"The Prices might have a wedding for Mamie," says Mis' Toplady, reflective. "Like enough with a catyier and all that. But I dunno's Mamie's ever had a beau in her life."

We were to have the exhibit – the Art and Loan Dress Exhibit, we called it – at my house, and I tell you it was fun getting ready for it. But it was hard work, too, as most fun is.

The morning of the day that was the day, everybody came bringing their stuff over in their arms. We had dress-forms from all the dress-makers and all the stores in town, and they were all set up around the rim of my parlor. Mis' Sturgis had just got her black silk put up and was trying to make out whether side view to show the three quarters train or front view to show the jet ornament was most becoming to the dress, when Miss Mayhew brought in her things and began helping us.

"How the dead speaks in clothes," Mis' Sturgis says. "This jet ornament was on my mother's bonnet for twelve years when I was a little girl."

"The Irish crochet medallion in the front of my basque," says Mis' Merriman, "was on a scarf of my mother's that come from the old country. It got old, and I took the best of it and appliqued it on a crazy quilt and slept under it for years. Then when I see Irish crochet beginning to be wore in the magazines again, I ripped it off and ragged out in it."