Patchwork Part 17

But as she neared the whitewashed fence of the garden she saw that the place was deserted. She ran lightly up the walk, rapped at the kitchen door, and entered without waiting for an answer to her knock.

"Mother Bab," she called.

"I'm here, Phbe," came a voice from the sitting-room.

"How are you? Is your headache all gone?" Phbe asked as she ran to the beloved person who came to meet her.

"All gone. I was so disappointed last night--but what have you done to your hair?"

"Oh, I forgot!" Phbe lifted her head proudly. "I meant to knock at the front door and be company to-day. I've got my hair up!"

"Phbe, Phbe," the woman drew her nearer. "Let me look at you." Her eyes scanned the face of the girl, her voice quivered as she spoke.

"You've grown up! Of course it didn't come in a night but it seems that way."

"The May fairies did it, Mother Bab. Yesterday I wore a braid. This morning when I woke I heard the robin who sings every morning in the apple tree outside my window and he was caroling, 'Put it up! Put it up!' I knew he meant my hair, so here I am, waiting for your blessing."

"You have it, you always have it! But"--she changed her mood--"are you sure the robin wasn't saying, 'Get up, get up!' Phbe?"

"Positive; it was only five o'clock."

"Now I must hear all about last night," said Mother Bab as they sat together on the broad wooden settee in the sitting-room. "David told me how nice you looked and how well you did."

"Did he tell you how pleased I am with the scarf? It's just lovely! And the color is beautiful. I wonder why--I wonder why I love pretty things so much, really pretty things, like crepe de chine and taffeta and panne velvet and satin. Oh, sometimes I think I must have them. When I go to Lancaster I want lots of lovely clothes and I hate ginghams and percales and serviceable things."

"I know, Phbe, I know how you feel about it."

"Do you really? Then it can't be so awfully wicked. You are so understanding, Mother Bab. I can't tell Aunt Maria how I feel about such things for she'd be dreadfully hurt or worried or provoked, but you seem always to know what I mean and how I feel."

"I was eighteen myself once, a good many years ago, but I still remember it."

"You have a good memory."

"Yes. Why, I can remember some of the dresses I wore when I was eighteen. But then, I have a dress bundle to help me remember them."

"What's a dress bundle?"

"Didn't Aunt Maria keep one for you?"

"I never heard of one."

"It's a long string of samples of dresses you wore when you were little.

Wait, I'll get mine and show you."

She left the room and went up-stairs. After a short time she returned and held out a stout thread upon which were strung small, irregular sc.r.a.ps of dress material. "This is my dress bundle. My mother started it for me when I was a baby and kept it up till I was big enough to do it myself. Every time I got a new dress a little patch of the goods was threaded on my dress bundle."

"Oh, may I see? Why, that's just like a part of your babyhood and childhood come back!"

The two heads bent over the bundle--the girl's with its light hair in its first putting up, the woman's with its graying hair folded under the white cap.

"Here"--Mother Bab turned the bundle upside down and fingered the sc.r.a.ps with that loving way of those who are dreaming of long departed days and touching a relic of those cherished hours--"this white calico with the little pink dots was the first dress any one gave me. Grandmother h.o.e.rner made it for me, all by hand. Funny, wasn't it, the way they used to put colored dresses on wee babies! See, here are pink calico ones and white with red figures and a few blue ones. I wore all these when I was a baby. Then when I grew older these; they are much prettier. This red delaine I wore to a spelling bee when I was about sixteen and I got a book for a prize for standing up next to last. This red and black checked debaige I can see yet. It had an overskirt on it trimmed with little ruffles. This purple cashmere with the yellow sprigs in it I had all trimmed with narrow black velvet ribbon. I'll never forget that dress--I wore it the day I met David's father."

"Oh, you must have looked lovely!"

"He said so." She smiled; her eyes looked beyond Phbe, back to the golden days of her youth when Love had come to her to bless and to abide with her long beyond the tarrying of the spirit in the flesh. "He said I looked nice. I met him the first time I wore the purple dress. It was at a corn-husking party at Jerry Grumb's barn. Some man played the fiddle and we danced."

"Danced!" echoed Phbe.

"Yes, danced. But just the old-fas.h.i.+oned Virginia reel. We had cider and apples and cake and pie for our treat and we went home at ten o'clock!

David walked home with me in the moonlight and I guess we liked each other from the first. We were married the next year, then we both turned plain."

"Were you ever sorry, Mother Bab?"

"That I married him, or that I turned plain?"

"Yes. Both, I mean."

"No, never sorry once, Phbe, about either. We were happy together. And about turning plain, why, I wasn't sorry either."

"But you had to give up Virginia reels and pretty dresses."

"Yes, but I learned there are deeper, more important things than dancing and wearing pretty dresses."

She looked at Phbe, but the girl had bowed her head over the dress bundle and appeared to be thinking.

"And so," continued Mother Bab softly, "my bundle ended with that dress.

Since I dress plain I don't wear colors, just gray and black. But I always thought if I had a girl I'd start a dress bundle for her, for it's so much satisfaction to get it out sometimes and look over the pieces and remember the dresses and some of the happy times you had when you wore them. But the girl never came."

"But you have David!"

"Yes, to be sure, he's been so much to me, but I couldn't make him a dress bundle. He wouldn't have liked it when he grew older--boys are different. And I wouldn't want him to be a sissy, either."

"He isn't, Mother Bab. He's fine!"

"I think so, Phbe. He has worked so hard since he's through school and he's so good to me and takes such care of the farm, though the crops don't always turn out as we want. But you haven't told me what you are going to do, now that you're through school."

"I don't know. I want to do something."

"Teach?"

"No. What I would like best of all is study music."

"In Greenwald? You mean to learn to play?"

"No, to learn to sing. I have often dreamed of studying music in a great city, like Philadelphia."

"What would you do then?"

"Sing, sing! I feel that my voice is my one talent and I don't want to bury it."