Roxy spoke in a solemn, muffled tone, something the voice she would have used if her father or Sylvane were dead in the house. She would have been more than human, and less than woman, had she not to some degree relished the situation. She remembered with deep satisfaction that, though she was his own sister, she had always reprehended Lance publicly and privately, holding him unfit to mate with this paragon. Callista had the sensation of being at her own funeral. She drooped, colorless and inert, in her chair, and stared past everything the room contained, out through the open door and across the far blue rim of hills.
"I believe in my soul these here needles Sylvane got me is too fine for my cotton," Roxy murmured, by way of attracting attention. "I wonder could you thread one for me, Callisty? Your eyes is younger than mine."
Callista took the needle and threaded it, handing it back with a sigh. As she did so, her glance encountered Roxy's solicitous gaze, then fell to the quilt.
"You—you've done a sight of work on that, haven't you, Sis' Roxy?" she asked gently.
The widow nodded. "An' there's a sight more to do," she added. 219
"This is a pretty figure," Callista said, pointing at random, but producing a kindly show of interest.
Roxy brightened.
"Can you make out what it's meant for?" she inquired eagerly. Then, for fear Callista should attempt and fail, "I aimed it for a Tree of Life, with a angel sorter peerched on it, an' one standin' un'neath. But," deprecatingly, "hit looks mo' like a jimpson weed to me. An' pears like I 'don't never have no luck with angels."
Callista's absent gaze rested upon the unsatisfactory sprigged calico and striped seersucker version of members of the heavenly host.
"Them Jacob's-ladder angels—you hain't never seen them, Callisty, sence I sorter tinkered they' wings. Look! 'Pears to me like it's he'ped 'em powerful. But these—I vow, I don't know what is the matter of 'em, without it's the goods. That thar stuff, is 'most too coarse for angels, I reckon. Or it might be the color. 'Warshed whiter'n snow—without spot or, stain—' that's what the Good Book says, whilst all these is spotted and figured. But ye see white on white wouldn't never show. I might 'a' used blue-and-white stripe. And then again, the sayin' is, 'Chastised with many stripes'—that'd never be angels, no how."