Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud)
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Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904
Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud)
Short stories, Canadian
So Penelope went to Blanche's party and her dress was the admiration
of every girl there. Mrs. Fairweather, who was visiting Mrs. Anderson,
looked closely at it also. She was a very sweet old lady, with silver
hair, which she wore in delightful, old-fashioned puffs, and she had
very bright, dark eyes. Penelope thought her altogether charming.
"She looks as if she had just stepped out of the frame of some lovely
old picture," she said to herself. "I wish she belonged to me. I'd
just love to have a grandmother like her. And I do wonder who it is
I've seen who looks so much like her."
A little later on the knowledge came to her suddenly, and she thought
with inward surprise: Why, it is Doris, of course. If my sister Doris
lives to be seventy years old and wears her hair in pretty white
puffs, she will look exactly as Mrs. Fairweather does now.
Mrs. Fairweather asked to have Penelope introduced to her, and when
they found themselves alone together she said gently, "My dear, I am
going to ask a very impertinent question. Will you tell me where you
got the silk of which your waist is made?"
Poor Penelope's pretty young face turned crimson. She was not troubled
with false pride by any means, but she simply could not bring herself
to tell Mrs. Fairweather that her waist was made out of the lining of
an old heirloom quilt.
"My Aunt Adella gave me--gave us--the material," she stammered. "And
my elder sister Doris made the waist for me. I think the silk once
belonged to my Grandmother Hunter."
"What was your grandmother's maiden name?" asked Mrs. Fairweather
eagerly.
"Penelope Saverne. I am named after her."
Mrs. Fairweather suddenly put her arm about Penelope and drew the
young girl to her, her lovely old face aglow with delight and
tenderness.
"Then you are my grandniece," she said. "Your grandmother was my
half-sister. When I saw your dress, I felt sure you were related to
her. I should recognize that rosebud silk if I came across it in
Thibet. Penelope Saverne was the daughter of my mother by her first
husband. Penelope was four years older than I was, but we were
devoted to each other. Oddly enough, our birthdays fell on the same
day, and when Penelope was twenty and I sixteen, my father gave us
each a silk dress of this very material. I have mine yet.
"Soon after this our mother died and our household was broken up.
Penelope went to live with her aunt and I went West with Father. This
was long ago, you know, when travelling and correspondence were not
the easy, matter-of-course things they are now. After a few years I
lost touch with my half-sister. I married out West and have lived
there all my life. I never knew what had become of Penelope. But
tonight, when I saw you come in in that waist made of the rosebud
silk, the whole past rose before me and I felt like a girl again. My
dear, I am a very lonely old woman, with nobody belonging to me. You
don't know how delighted I am to find that I have two grandnieces."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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