People in those days thought it a great favor to have clothes left to them, as you will see by old wills. And occasionally the grandmothers brought out garments beforehand, and did not wait until they were dead and gone.
"I have a silk gown that I never wore above half a dozen times. I could have it dyed, I suppose, but they're so apt to get stringy afterward. Maybe you wouldn't like it because it's a kind of gray. You're free to leave it alone. I shan't be a mite put out."
The old spirit of holding on reasserted itself. Of course, if Betty didn't like it, her duty would be done.
"Oh, Aunt Priscilla! It looks like moonlight over the harbor. It's beautiful."
The elder woman had shaken it out and made ripples with it, and Betty stood in admiring wonderment. It looked to her like a wedding gown, but she knew Aunt Priscilla's had been Canton crape, dyed brown first and then black and then worn out. There was an old adage to the effect that one never could get rich until one's wedding clothes were worn out.
"It's spotted some, I find—just a faint kind of yellow, but that may cut out. I never had any good of it," and she sighed. "It isn't what you might call gay; but, land alive! I might as well have bought bright red! There's plenty of it to make over. They weren't wearing such skimping skirts then, and I had an extra breadth put in so that it would all fade alike. Well——" And she gave a half-reluctant sigh.
"Why, I feel as if it ought to be saved for a wedding gown," declared Betty, her eyes alight with pleasure. "It's the most beautiful thing. Oh, Aunt Priscilla!"
A modern girl would have thrown her arms around Aunt Priscilla's neck and kissed her, if one could imagine a modern girl being grateful for a gown a quarter of a century old, except for masquerading purposes. People who could remember the great Jonathan Edwards awakening still classed all outward demonstrations of regard as carnal affections to be subdued. The poor old life hungered now for a little human love without understanding what its want really was, just as it had hungered for more than half a century.
"Well, child, maybe 'Lecty can plan to make something out of it. You better just take it to her. And here's a box of ribbons, things I've had no use for this many a year. You see I had a way of saving up—I didn't have much call for wearing such."
Aunt Priscilla felt that she was renouncing idols. How many times she had fingered these things with exquisite love and longing and a desire to wear them! Madam Bowdoin, almost ten years older, wore her fine ribbons and laces and her own snowy white hair in little rings about her forehead. No one accused her of aping youth. Aunt Priscilla had worn a false front under her cap for many a year that was now a rusty, faded brown. Her own white hair was cut off close.