Gale Zona
Peace in Friendship Village
"Oh," says Miss Mayhew, all of a sudden. "What a lovely shawl! What you going to put that on?"
"Where?" says we.
"Why this," she says – but still we didn't see, for she didn't have anything but the shawl Mis' Hubbelthwait had worn in over her head. "This Paisley shawl," Miss Mayhew says.
"My land!" says Mis' Hubbelthwait, "I put that on me to go through the cold hall and bring in the kindling, and run out for a panful of chips, and like that."
Miss Mayhew smiled. "You must put that on a figure," she says. "Why, it's beautiful. Look at those colors."
"All faded out," says Mis' Hubbelthwait, and thought Miss Mayhew was making fun of her. But she wasn't. And she insisted on draping it and putting it near the front. Miss Mayhew was nice, but she was queer in some things. I'd upholstered my kitchen rocker with part of my Paisley shawl, and covered the ironing-board under the cloth with the rest of it – and nothing would do but that old chair must be toted up in her room! And yet I'd spent four dollars for a new golden-oak rocker when she'd engaged the rooms… But me, I urged them to let her do as she pleased with Mis' Hubbelthwait's shawl that morning; because I remembered that what had been the matter in my kitchen the afternoon before was probably still the matter. And moreover, I'd looked when I made the bed, and I see that the picture hadn't been set back on the bureau.
Well, then we began putting up Miss Mayhew's own things – and I tell you they were pretty. There wasn't much to them – little slimpsey soft silk things, made real inexpensive with no lining, and not fussed up at all – but they had an air to them that you can hardly ever get into a dress, no matter how close you follow your paper pattern. She had a pink and a blue and a white and a lavender – and one lovely rose gown that I took and held up before her.
"I'd dearly love to see you in this," says I. "I bet you look like a rose in it – or more so."
Her face, that was usually bright and soft all in one, sort of fell, like a cloud had blown over it.
"I always liked to wear that dress," she says. "I had – there were folks that liked it."
"Put it on to-night," I says, "and take charge of this room for us."
But she kind of shrunk back, and shook her head.
And I thought, like lightning, "It was the Picture Man that was on the bureau that liked to see you in that dress – or I miss my guess."
But I never said a word, and went on putting a dress-form together.
The room looked real pretty when we got all the things up. There were fourteen dresses in all, around the room. In the very middle was Mis' Toplady's wedding-dress – white silk, made real full, with the white raspberry buttons.
"For twenty years," she said, "it's been in the bottom drawer of the spare room. It's nice to see it wore."
And we all thought it was so nice that we borrowed the wax figure from the White House Emporium, and put the dress on. It looked real funny, though, to see that smirking, red-cheeked figure with lots of light hair and its head on one side, coming up out of Mis' Toplady's wedding-dress.
Us ladies were all ready and on hand early that night, dressed in our black alpacas and wearing white aprons, most of us; and Miss Mayhew had on a little white dimity, and she insisted on helping in the kitchen – we were going to give them only lemonade and sandwiches, for we were expecting the whole town, and the admission was only fifteen cents apiece.
Then – I remember it was just after the clock struck seven – my telephone rang. And it was a man's voice – which is exciting in itself, no man ever calling me up without it's the grocery-man to try to get rid of some of his fruit that's going to spoil, or the flour and feed man to say he can't send up the corn-meal till to-morrow, after all. And this Voice wasn't like either one of them.
He asked if this was my number, brisk and strong and deep and sure, and as if he was used to everything there is.
"Is Miss Marjorie Mayhew there?" says he.
"Miss Marjorie Mayhew," says I, thoughtful. "Why, I dunno's I ever heard her front name."
"Whose front name?" says he.
"Why," says I, "Miss Mayhew's. That's who we're talking about, ain't it?"
"Oh," says he, "then there is a Miss Mayhew staying there?"
"No, sir," says I short, "there ain't. She's the Miss Mayhew – the one I mean – and anybody that's ever seen her would tell you the same thing."
He was still at that, just for a second. And when he spoke again, his voice had somehow got a little different – I couldn't tell how.
"I see," says he, "that you and I understand each other perfectly. May I speak to the Miss Mayhew?"
"Why, sure," says I hearty. "Sure you can."
So I went in the kitchen and found her where she was stirring lemon-juice in my big stone crock. And when I told her, first she turned red-rose red, and then she turned white-rose white.
"Me?" she says. "Who can want me? Who knows I'm here?"
"You go on and answer the 'phone, child," I says to her. "Him and me, we understand each other perfectly."
So she went. I couldn't help hearing what she said.
"Yes."
"Yes."
"You are?"
"It doesn't matter in the least."
"If you wish."
"Two automobiles?"
"Very well. Any time."
"Oh, not at all, I assure you."
– all in a cool, don't-care little voice that I never in this wide world would have recognized as Miss Mayhew's voice. Then she hung up. And I stepped out of the cloak-closet. I took hold of her two shoulders and looked in her eyes. And I saw she was palpitating and trembling and breathless and pink.
"Marjorie Mayhew," I says, "I never knew that was your name, till just now when that Nice Voice asked for you. But stranger though you are to me – or more so – I want to say something to you: If you ever love – I don't say That Nice Voice, but Any Nice Voice, don't you never, never speak cold to it like you just done. No matter what – "
She looked at me, kind of sweet and kind of still, and long and deep. And I saw that we both knew what we both knew.
"I know," she says. "Folks are so foolish – oh, so foolish! I know it now. And yet – "
"And yet you young folks hurt love for pride all the time," I says. "And love is gold, and pride is clay. And some of you never find it out till too late."
"I know," she says in a whisper, "I know – " Then she looked up. "Twelve folks are coming here in two automobiles in about half an hour. The telephone was from Prescott – that's about ten miles, isn't it? It's the Hewitts. From the city – and some guests of theirs – "
"The Hewitts?" I says over. "From the city?"
She nodded.
"The Hewitts," I pressed on, "that give us our library? And that we want to name the park for?"
Yes. It was them.
"Why, my land," I says, "my land – let me tell the ladies."
I rushed in on them, where they were walking 'round the parlor peaceful, each lady looking over her own dress and giving little twitches to it here and there to make the set right.
"The Hewitts," I says, "that we've all wanted to meet for years on end. And now look at us – dressed up in every-day, or not so much so, when we'd like to do them honor."
Mis' Toplady, standing by her wedding dress on the wax form, waved both her arms.
"Ladies!" she says. "S'posing we ain't any of us dressed up. Can't we dress up, I'd like to know? Here's all our best bib and tucker present with us. What's to prevent us putting it on?"
"But the exhibit!" says Mis' Holcomb most into a wail. "The exhibit that they was to pay fifteen cents apiece for?"
"Well," says Mis' Toplady majestic, "they'll have it, won't they? We'll tell them which is which – only we'll all be wearing our own!"
Like lightning we decided. Each lady ripped her own dress off its wire form and scuttled for up-stairs. I took mine too, and headed with them; and at the turn I met Marjorie Mayhew, running down the stairs.
"Oh!" she says, kind of excited and kind of ashamed. "Do you think it'd spoil your exhibit if I took – if I wore – that rose dress – "
"No, child," I says. "Go right down and get it. That won't spoil the exhibit. The exhibit," I says, "is going to be exhibited on."
We were into our clothes in no time, hooking each other up, laughing like girls.
The first of us was just beginning to appear, when the two big cars came breathing up to the gate.
In came the Hewitts, and land – in one glance I saw there was nothing about them that was like what we'd always imagined – nothing grand or sweeping or rustling or cold. I guess that kind of city folks has gone out of fashion, never to come back. The Hewitts didn't seem like city folks at all – they seemed just like folks. It made a real nice surprise. And we all got to be folks, short off. For when I ushered them into my parlor, there were all the wire dress-forms setting around with nothing whatever on.
"My land," I says, "we might as well own right up to what we done," I says. And I told them, frank. And I dunno which enjoyed it the most, them or us.
The minute I saw him, I knew him. I mean The Nice Voice. I'd have known him by his voice if I hadn't been acquainted with his face, but I was. He was the picture that wasn't on Miss Marjorie Mayhew's dresser any longer – and, even more than the picture, he looked like what you mean when you say "man." When I was introduced to him I wanted to say: "How do you do. Oh! I'm glad you look like that. She deserves it!"
But even if I could, I'd have been struck too dumb to do it. For I caught his name – and he was the only son of the Hewitts, and heir-evident to all his folks.
The only fault I could lay to his door was that he didn't have any eyes. Not for us. He was looking every-which-way, and I knew for who. So as soon as I could, I slips up to him and I says merely:
"This way."
He was right there with me, in a second. I took him up the stairs, and tapped at my front chamber door.
She was setting in there on her couch, red as a red rose this time. And when she see who was with me, she looked more so than ever. But she spoke gentle and self-possessed, as women can that's been trained that way all their days.
"How do you do?" says she, and gave him her hand, stranger-cool.
That man – he pays no more attention to me than if I hadn't been there. He just naturally walked across the room, put his hands on her shoulders, looked deep into her eyes for long enough to read what she couldn't help being there, and then he took her in his arms.
I slipped out and pulled the door to. And in the hall I met from six to seven folks coming up to take their things off, and heading straight for the front chamber. I stood myself up in front of the door.
"Walk right into my room," says I – though I knew full well that it looked like Bedlam, and that I was letting good housekeepers in to see it. And so they done. And, more heads appearing on the stairs about then, I see that what I had to do was to stand where I was – if they were to have their Great Five Minutes in peace.
Could anybody have helped doing that? And could anybody have helped hearing that little murmur that came to me from that room?
"Dearest," he said, "how could you – how could you do like this? I've looked everywhere – "
"I thought," she said, "that you'd never come. I thought you weren't looking."
"You owe me," he told her solemnly, "six solid weeks of my life. I've done nothing since you left."
"When a month went by," she owned up, "and you hadn't come, I – I took your picture off my bureau."
"Where'd you put it?" he asks, stern.
She laughed out, kind of light and joyous.
"In my hand-bag," says she.
Then they were still a minute.
"Walk right to the left, and left your things right on my bed…" I heard myself saying over, crazy, to some folks. But then of course you always do expect your hostess to be more or less crazy-headed, and nobody thought anything of it, I guess.
They came out in just a minute, and we went down the stairs together. And on the way down he says to her:
"Remember, you're going back with us to-night. And I'm never going to let you out of my sight again – ever."
And she said: "But I know why. Because it'd be hard work to make me go…"
At the foot of the stairs Mis' Holcomb met me, her silk dress's collar under one ear.
"Have you heard?" she says. "We didn't have much exhibit, but the Hewitts have give us enough for the park – outright."
I'd wanted that park like I'd wanted nothing else for the town. But I hardly sensed what she said. I was looking acrost to where those two stood, and pretty soon I walked over to them.
"Is this the Miss Mayhew you were referring to?" I ask' him, demure.
"This," says he, his nice eyes twinkling, "is the only Miss Mayhew there is."
"You may say that now," says I then, bold. "But – I see you won't call her that long."
He looked at me, and she looked at me, and they both put out their hands to me.
"I see," says he, "that we three understand one another perfectly."
ROSE PINK 7
The Art and Loan Dress Exhibit recalls a story of my early association with Calliope Marsh in Friendship Village, when yet she was not well known to me – her humanity, her habit of self-giving, her joy in life other than her own.
Afterward I knew that I had never seen a woman more keenly and constantly a participant in the lives of others. She was hardly individuated at all. She suffered and joyed with others, literally, more than she did in her "own" affairs. I now feel certain that before we can reach the individualism which we crave – and have tried to claim too soon – we must first know such participation as hers in all conscious life – in all life, conscious or unconscious.
This is that early story, as I then wrote it down:
Calliope Marsh had been having a "small company." Though nominally she was hostess to twenty of us, invited there for six o'clock supper, yet we did not see Calliope until supper was done. Mis' Postmaster Sykes had opened the door for us, had told us to "walk up-stairs to the right an' lay aside your things," and had marshaled us to the dining-room and so to chairs outlining the room. And there the daughters of most of the guests had served us while Calliope stayed in the kitchen, with Hannah Hager to help her, seasoning and stirring and "getting it onto the plates." Afterward, flushed and, I thought, lovably nervous, Calliope came in to receive our congratulations and presently to hear good-nights. But I, who should have hurried home to Madame Josephine, the modiste from town who that week called my soul her own, waited for a little to talk it over – partly, I confess, because a fine, driving rain had begun to fall.
We sat in the kitchen while Calliope ate her own belated supper on a corner of the kitchen table; and on another corner, thin, tired little Hannah Hager ate hers. And, as is our way in Friendship, Hannah talked it over, too – that little maid-of-all-work, who was nowhere attached in service, but lived in a corner of Grandma Hawley's cottage and went tirelessly about the village ministering to the needs of us all.
"Everything you hed was lovely, Miss Marsh," Hannah said with shining content and a tired sigh. "You didn't hev a single set-back, did you?"
"Well, I dunno," Calliope doubted; "it all tastes like so much chips to me, even now. I was kind o' nervous over my pressed ham, too. I noticed two o' the plates didn't eat all theirs, but the girls couldn't rec'lect whose they was. Did you notice?"
"No, sir, I didn't," Hannah confessed with a shake of the head at herself. "I did notice," she amended brightly, "that Mis' Postmaster Sykes didn't make way with all her cream, but I guess ice-cream don't agree with her. She's got a kind o' peculiar stomach."
"Well-a, anybody hev on anything new?" Calliope asked with interest. "I couldn't tell a stitch anybody hed on. I don't seem to sense things when I hev company."
There was no need for me to give evidence.
"Oh!" Hannah said, as we say when we mean a thing very much, "didn't you see Lyddy Eider?"
"Seems to me I did take it in she hed on something pink," Calliope remembered.
Little Hannah stood up in her excitement.
"Pink, Miss Marsh!" she said. "I should say it was. Pink with cloth, w'ite. The w'ite," Hannah illustrated it, "went here an' so, in points. In between was lace an' little ribbon, pink too. An' all up so was buttons. An' it all rustled w'en she stirred 'round. An' it laid smooth down, like it was starched an' ironed, an' then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft. An' every way she stood it looked nice – it didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong. It was dressmaker-made, ma'am," Hannah concluded impressively. "An' it looked like the pictures in libr'ry books. My! You'd ought 'a' seen Gramma Hawley. She fair et Lydia up with lookin' at her."
I, who was not yet acquainted with every one in Friendship, had already observed the two that day – brown, bent Grandma Hawley and the elaborately self-possessed Miss Eider, with a conspicuously high-pitched voice, who lived in the city and was occasionally a guest in the village. The girl, who I gathered had once lived in Friendship, was like a living proof that all village maids may become princesses; and the brooding tenderness of the old woman had impressed me as might a mourning dove mothering some sprightly tanager.
"Gramma Hawley brought her up from a little thing," Calliope explained to me now, "and a rich Mis' Eider, from the city, she adopted her, and Gramma let her go. I guess it near killed Gramma to do it – but she'd always been one to like nice things herself, and she couldn't get them, so she see what it'd mean to Lyddy. Lyddy's got pretty proud, she's hed so much to do with, but she comes back to see Gramma sometimes, I'll say that for her. Didn't anybody else hev on anything new?"
"No," Hannah knew positively, "they all come out in the same old togs. When the finger-bowl started I run up in the hall an' peeked down the register, so's to see 'em pass out o' the room. Comp'ny clo'es don't change much here in Friendship. Mis' Postmaster Sykes says yest'day, when we was ironin': 'Folks,' she says, 'don't dress as much here in Friendship as I wish't we did. Land knows,' Mis' Sykes says, 'I don't dress, neither. But I like to see it done.'"
Calliope, who is sixty and has a rosy, wrinkled face, looked sidewise down the long vista of the cooking-stove coals.
"Like to see it done!" she repeated. "Why, I get so raving hungry to see some colored dress-goods on somebody seem's though I'd fly. Black and brown and gray – gray and brown and black hung on to every woman in Friendship. Every one of us has our clo'es picked out so everlastin' durable."
Hannah sympathetically giggled with, "Don't they, though?"
"My grief!" Calliope exclaimed. "It reminds me, I got my mother's calicoes down to pass 'round and I never thought to take them in."
She went to her new golden oak kitchen cabinet – a birthday gift to Calliope from the Friendship church for her services at its organ – and brought us her mother's "calicoes" – a huge box of pieces left from every wool and lawn and "morning housework dress" worn by the Marshes, quick and passed, and by their friends. Calliope knew them all; and I listened idly while the procession went by us in sad-colored fabrics – "black and brown and gray – gray and brown and black."
I think that my attention may have wandered a little, for I was recalled by some slight stir made by Hannah Hager. She had risen and was bending toward Calliope, with such leaping wistfulness in her eyes that I followed her look. And I saw among the pieces, like a bright breast in sober plumage, a square of chambray in an exquisite color of rose.
"Oh – " said little Hannah softly, "hain't that just beauti-ful?"
"Like it, Hannah?" Calliope asked.
"My!" said the little maid fervently.
"It was a dress Gramma Hawley made for Lyddy Eider when she was a little girl," Calliope explained. "I dunno but what it was the last one she made for her. Pretty, ain't it? Lyddy always seemed to hanker some after pink. Gramma mostly always got her pink." Calliope glanced at Hannah, over-shoulder. "Why don't you get a pink one for then?" she asked abruptly; and, "When is it to be, Hannah?" she challenged her, teasingly, as we tease for only one cause.
On which I had pleasure in the sudden rose-pink of Hannah's face, and she sank back in her seat at the table corner in the particular, delicious anguish that comes but once.
"There, there," said Calliope soothingly, "no need to turn any more colors, 's I know of. Land, if they ain't enough sandwiches left to fry for my dinner."
When, presently, Calliope and I were in the dining-room and I was watching her "redd up" the table while Hannah clattered dishes in the kitchen, I asked her who Hannah's prince might be. Calliope told me with a manner of triumph. For was he not Henry Austin, that great, good-looking giant who helped in the post-office store, whose baritone voice was the making of the church choir and on whom many Friendship daughters would not have looked unkindly?
"I'm so glad for her," Calliope said. "She ain't hed many to love besides Gramma Hawley – and Gramma's so wrapped up in Lyddy Eider. And yet I feel bad for Hannah, too. All their lives folks here'll likely say: 'How'd he come to marry her?' It's hard to be that kind of woman. I wish't Hannah could hev a wedding that would show 'em she is somebody. I wish't she could hev a wedding dress that would show them how pretty she is – a dress all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places and little unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of having if you weren't real up in dress," Calliope explained. "A dress like Lyddy Eider always has on."
"Calliope!" I said then, laughing. "I believe you would be a regular fashion plate, if you could afford it."
"I would," she gravely admitted, "I'm afraid I would. I love nice clothes and I just worship colors." She hesitated, looking at me with a manner of shyness. "Sit still a minute, will you?" she said, "I'd like to show you something."
She went upstairs and I listened to Hannah Hager, clattering kitchen things and singing:
"He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons,
To tie up my bonny brown ha – ir."
Pink chambray and the love of blue ribbons and Miss Lydia Eider in her dress that was "dressmaker-made." These I turned in my mind, and I found myself thinking of my visit to the town in the next week, for which Madame Josephine was preparing; and of how certain elegancies are there officially recognized instead of being merely divined by the wistful amateur in color and textile. How Calliope and Hannah would have delighted, I thought idly, in the town's way of pretty things to wear, such as Josephine could make; the way that Lydia Eider knew, in her frocks that were "dressmaker-made." Indeed, Calliope and Hannah and Lydia Eider had been physically cast in the same mold of prettiness and of proportion, but only Lydia had come into her own.
And then Calliope came down, and she was bringing a long, white box. She sat before me with the box on her knee and I saw that she was flushing like a girl.
"I expect," she said, "you'll think I'm real worldly-minded. I dunno. Mebbe I am. But when I get out in company and see everybody wearing the dark shades like they do here in Friendship so's their dresses won't show dirt, I declare I want to stand up and tell 'em: 'Colors! Colors! What'd the Lord put colors in the world for? Burn up your black and brown and gray and get into somethin' happy-colored, and see the difference it'll make in the way you feel inside.' I get so," Calliope said solemnly, "that when I put on my best black taffeta with the white turnovers, I declare I could slit it up the back seam. And I've felt that way a long time. And that's what made me – "
She fingered the white box and lifted the cover from a mass of tissue-paper.
"When Uncle Ezra Marsh died sixteen years ago last Summer," she said, "he left me a little bit of money – just a little dab, but enough to mend the wood-shed roof or buy a new cook-stove or do any of the useful things that's always staring you in the face. And I turned my back flat on every one of them. And I put the money in my pocket and went into the city. And there," said Calliope breathlessly, "I bought this."
She unwrapped it from its tissues, and it was yards and yards of lustrous, exquisite soft silk, colored rose-pink, and responding in folds almost tenderly to the hand that touched it.
"It's mine," Calliope said, "mine. My dress. And I haven't ever hed the sheer, moral courage to get it made up."
And that I could well understand. For though Calliope's delicacy of figure and feature would have been well enough become by the soft pink, Friendship would have lifted its hands to see her so and she would instantly have been "talked about."
"Seems to me," Calliope said, smoothing the silk, "that if I could have on a dress like this I'd feel another kind of being – sort o' free and liberty-like. Of course," she added hurriedly, "I know well enough a pink dress ain't what-you-might-say important. But land, land, how I'd like one on me in company! Ain't it funny," she added, "in the city nobody'd think anything of my wearing it. In the city they sort of seem to know colors ain't wicked, so's they look nice. I use' to think," Calliope added, laughing a little, "I'd hev it made up and go to town and wear it on the street. All alone. Even if it was a black street. I guess you'll think I'm terrible foolish."
But with that the idea which had come to me vaguely and as an impossibility, took shape; and I poured it out to Calliope as a thing possible, desirable, inevitable.
"Calliope!" I said. "Bring the silk to my house. Let Madame Josephine make it up. And next week come with me to the city – for the opera. We will have a box – and afterward supper – and you shall wear the pink gown – and a long, black silk coat of mine – "
"You're fooling – you're fooling!" Calliope cried, trembling.
But I made her know how in earnest I was; for, indeed, on the instant my mind was made up that the thing must be, that the lonely pink dress must see the light and with it Calliope's shy hopes, long cherished. And so, before I left her, it was arranged. She had agreed to come next morning to my house, if Madame Josephine were willing, bringing the rose-pink silk.
"Me!" she said at last. "Why, me! Why, it's enough to make all the me's I've been turn over in their graves. And I guess they hev turned and come trooping out, young again."
Then, as she stood up, letting the soft stuff unwind and fall in shining abandon, we heard a little noise – tapping, insistent. It was very near to us – quite in the little passage; and as Calliope turned with the silk still in her arms the door swung back and there stood Grandma Hawley. She was leaning on her thick stick, and her gray lace cap was all awry and a mist of the fine, driving rain was on her gray hair.
"I got m' feet wet," she said querulously. "M' feet are wet. Lyddy's gone to Mis' Sykes's. I comeback to stay a spell till it dries off some – "
"Grandma!" Calliope cried, hurrying to her, "I didn't hear you come in. I never heard you. Come out by the kitchen fire and set your feet in the oven."
Calliope had tossed the silk on the table and had run to the old woman with outstretched hand; but the outstretched hand Grandma Hawley did not see. She stood still, looking by Calliope with a manner rather than an expression of questioning.
"What is't?" she asked, nodding direction.
Calliope understood, and she slightly lifted her brows and her thin shoulders, and seemed to glance at me.
"It's some pink for a dress, gramma," she said.
Grandma Hawley came a little nearer, and stood, a neat, bent figure in rusty black, looking, down at the sumptuous, shining lengths. Then she laid her brown, veined hand upon the silk – and I remember now her fingers, being pricked and roughened by her constant needle, caught and rubbed on the soft stuff.
"My soul," she said, "it's pink silk."
She lifted her face to Calliope, the perpetual trembling of her head making her voice come tremulously.
"That's what Abe Hawley was always talkin' when I married him," she said. "'A pink silk dress fer ye, Minnie. A fine pink silk to set ye off,' s' 'e over an' over. I thought I was a-goin' to hev it. I hed the style all picked out in my head. I know I use' to lay awake nights an' cut it out. But, time the cookin' things was paid for, the first baby come – an' then the other three to do for. An' Abe he didn't say pink silk after the fourth. But I use' to cut it out in the night, fer all that. I dunno but I cut it out yet, when I can't get to sleep an' my head feels bad. My head ain't right. It bothers me some, hummin' and ringin'. Las' night m' head – "
"There, there, gramma," said Calliope, and took her arm. "You come along with me and set your feet in the oven."
I had her other arm, and we turned toward the kitchen. And we were hushed as if we had heard some futile, unfulfilled wish of the dead still beating impotent wings.
In the kitchen doorway Hannah Hager was standing. She must have seen that glowing, heaped-up silk on the table, but it did not even hold her glance. For she had heard what Grandma Hawley had been saying, and it had touched her, who was so jealously devoted to the old woman, perhaps even more than it had touched Calliope and me.
"Miss Marsh, now," Hannah tried to say, "shall I put the butter that's left in the cookin'-butter jar?" And then her little features were caught here and there in the puckers of a very child's weeping, and she stood before us as a child might stand, crying softly without covering her face. She held out a hand to the old woman, and Calliope and I let her lead her to the stove. My heart went out to the little maid for her tears and to Calliope for the sympathy in her eyes.
Grandma Hawley was talking on.
"I must 'a' got a little cold," she said plaintively. "It always settles in my head. My head's real bad. An' now I got m' feet wet – "
