The Circle had been founded in war time when women scraped lint and sewed with a passionate zeal. Martha was a little girl then, wondering what the excitement was really about, though, since it had lasted through her own brief period, she took it that war was a permanent condition, like bread or weather. Now she often mused over those old days and thought how marvelous it was that she could ever have been young enough to see no significance in that time of blood and pain. In these middle years of hers the Circle was a different affair, but it kept its loyal being. To-day it met in the basement of the church, and there, when Martha went plodding in, nearly all the other members were assembled. Sometimes they sewed for sufferers from varying disasters, but to-day their hands were idle, and a buzz of talk saluted her. They looked up as one woman when she entered.
"There she is," called two or three, and Lydia Vesey, the little dressmaker, as sharp and unexpected as the slash of her own too-impulsive scissors, came forward with a run.
"You got it?" she inquired.
Mrs. Waterman laughed richly, and set her umbrella in the corner. Then, still holding one hand closed upon the check, she untied her hat and fanned herself with it during the relief of sinking into a seat.
"Do let me get my breath," she besought, yet as if she prolonged the moment for the sake of the dramatic weight the tale demanded. "Seems if I never experienced such a day as this. It's hotter'n any fall I ever see."
"You look very warm, Martha," said Ellen Bayliss, in her gentle way. She was sitting by the window, bending over an embroidered square, the sun on her soft curls and delicate cheek unveiling the look of middle life, yet doing something kindly, too; for though he showed the withered texture of her skin, he brought out the last fleck of gold in her hair, and balanced sadness with some bloom. Ellen had been accounted a beauty, and her niece Nellie was a beauty now, of a more radiant type. She was the rose of life, but aunt Ellen had the fragrance of roses in a jar.
"You sewin', Ellen?" Martha inquired, as if she were willing to shift the topic from what would exact continued speech from her, and at least defer her colleagues' satisfaction. "You're the only one that's brought their thimble, I'll be bound."
"It's only this same centrepiece," Ellen answered, holding it up. "Mrs. Hilton told me if I'd send it after her, she'd give me three dollars for it. I thought I could turn the money into the fund."
"You got it?" Lydia Vesey cried again, as if she could not possibly crowd her interest under, and this time she had reënforcements from without. Mrs. Daniel Pray, who was almost a giantess and bent laboriously over to accommodate her height to her husband's, took off her glasses and laid them on her declivitous lap, the better to fix Martha with her dull, small eyes.
"I'll be whipped if I believe you've got it, after all," she offered discontentedly. "Mebbe they're goin' to send by mail."