"I'd be glad if you would. Beggars mustn't be choosers; but if they might, I should say it was the very thing. Sackcloth, you know; and then, perhaps, the ashes might be excused. I'm in solemn earnest, though. I'm reformed. You've done it; and you," she added, turning round short on Leslie Goldthwaite,—"you've been at it a long time, unbeknownst to yourself; and you, ma'am,—you finished it last night. It's been like the casting out of the devils in Scripture. They always give a howl, you know, and go out of 'em!"
CHAPTER XIV.
"FRIENDS OF MAMMON."
Sin Saxon came heart and soul into Miss Craydocke's generous and delicate plans. The work was done, to be sure. The third trunk, that had been "full of old winter dresses to be made over," was locked upon the nice little completed frocks and sacks that forestalled the care and hurry of "fall work" for the overburdened mother, and were to gladden her unexpecting eyes, as such store only can gladden the anxious family manager who feels the changeful, shortening days come treading, with their speedy demands, upon the very skirts of long, golden sunshiny August hours.
Susan and Martha Josselyn felt, on their part, as only busy workers feel who fasten the last thread, or dash a period to the last page, and turn around to breathe the breath of the free, and choose for once and for a while what they shall do. The first hour of this freedom rested them more than the whole six weeks that they had been getting half-rest, with the burden still upon their thought and always waiting for their hands. It was like the first half-day to children, when school has closed and books are brought home for the long vacation. All the possible delight of coming weeks is distilled to one delicious drop, and tasted then.
"It's 'none of my funeral,' I know," Sin Saxon said to Miss Craydocke. "I'm only an eleventh-hour helper; but I'll come in for the holiday business, if you'll let me; and perhaps, after all, that's more in my line."
Everything seemed to be in her line that she once took hold of. She had little private consultations with Miss Craydocke. "It's to be your party to Feather-Cap, but it shall be my party to Minster Rock," she said. "Leave that to me, please. Now the howl's off my hands, I feel equal to anything.'"
Just in time for the party to Minster Rock, a great basket and box from home arrived for Sin Saxon. In the first were delicious early peaches, rose-color and gold, wrapped one by one in soft paper and laid among fine sawdust; early pears, also, with the summer incense in their spiciness; greenhouse grapes, white and amber and purple. The other held delicate cakes and confections unknown to Outledge, as carefully put up, and quite fresh and unharmed. "Everything comes in right for me," she exclaimed, running back and forth to Miss Craydocke with new and more charming discoveries as she excavated. Not a word did she say of the letter that had gone down from her four days before, asking her mother for these things, and to send her some money; "for a party," she told her, "that she would rather give here than to have her usual summer fête after her return."
"You quite eclipse and extinguish my poor little doings," said Miss Craydocke, admiring and rejoicing all the while as genuinely as Sin herself.