Kentucky -- Fiction; Older women -- Fiction; Widows -- Fiction
And when she appeared a moment later her face wore the radiant look of
a girl who displays her first party costume, or a bride her
wedding-gown. Over her arm hung the reception gown of soft, black
China silk, with plain full skirt and shirred waist. There were
ruffles of point lace in the full sleeves, and she held up the
point-lace cap and fichu that completed the costume.
"To think o' me wearin' such clothes," said Aunt Jane exultingly. "And
the curious part of it was, child, that I hadn't had these things on
five minutes, till I felt like they belonged to me, and it seemed as
if I'd been wearin' lace and silk all my life. And Henrietta stood off
and looked at me, and says she, 'Grandma, you look exactly like a
family portrait.' And when Archibald come home after the reception, he
says, says he, 'We ought to have grandma's picture painted in that
dress.' And Henrietta says, 'Yes; and I want another picture of
grandma in her old purple calico dress and gingham apron, settin' in
that old high-back rockin'-chair with one of her patchwork quilts over
her lap.' Says she, 'That's the way I remember seein' grandma when I
was a little gyirl, and that's the way _I_ want her picture taken.'"
She paused to shake out the lustrous silk and spread the fichu over it
that I might see the delicate pattern of the lace.
"I started to leave this dress at Henrietta's," she observed, "for I
knew I wouldn't have use for such clothes as these down here on the
farm, but Henrietta folded 'em up and put 'em in my trunk, and she
said I had to wear 'em every Sunday evenin' and sit out on the porch
and think about her and Archibald. And then, child, when I die they
can bury me in this dress." And her cheerful smile told me that if
death had held any terrors for Aunt Jane, those terrors would be
largely assuaged by the thought of going to her long rest in point
lace and silk. Nigh on to eighty years, "but yet a woman!"
"Now what was the next thing I went to? Oh, yes! the Brownin' Club.
Two or three days after the reception, Henrietta says to me, 'Grandma,
the Brownin' Club meets with me this evenin', and I want you to put on
your silk dress and come down to the parlor and listen to our papers.'
And she told me who Brownin' was, and said she was goin' to read a
paper on his home life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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