City and town life -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"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."
"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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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