She folded the carpet slowly up, regarding it with covetous eyes.
“I guess,” she continued, slowly, “I’ll look out a counterpane for her; she’ll like it just as well, and it’s a better wedding present; folks can get along without a carpet, but they must have bed kiverin’.”
She went up to a spare chamber, and opened the chest of drawers in which were safely packed the various articles appertaining to her own much-lauded “setting out.” There were piles of linen and bed-clothes, all getting yellow from disuse; from the latter she selected a blue and white yarn counterpane and spread it over the bed.
“Wal, that is dreadful purty! I kinder hate to part with it; mother helped me make it, and I don’t feel as if ’twould be exactly right to give it away. I’ll give Janey a pair of sheets and ruffled pillow-cases instead.”
She took out the sheets and pillow-cases, smoothing down the ruffles and admiring their fineness. They looked more elegant than ever, and Aunt Polly decided that the sheets alone would be present enough, so she refolded the pillow-cases and put them back in the drawer, where they had formerly reposed. Still she was not satisfied, and wavered a long time between a woolen blanket and the sheets; but Jane’s bridal stock was doomed to want both. Aunt Polly’s eye fell upon a roll of articles which seemed intended for the decoration of a baby’s cradle; even in her chaste solitude the old maid fingered them with decorous hesitation.
She unrolled the bundle and took up two patch-work quilts exactly alike, and pieced from gorgeous scraps of calico by her own fair hands. She compared and measured them, to see that there was no difference, and finally chose the one that proved a fraction of an inch narrower than the other.
“It’s big enough,” she murmured, absently; “it’ll cover a child a year old, and that’s as much as any one could reasonably ask for.”
Having made her decision, she seemed more at ease in her mind, laid the other things carefully away, sprinkled fresh lavender over them, and turned the key once more upon her treasures, taking up the quilt with a jerk and hastening down stairs, as if she feared to remain longer, lest she should lock that up too.
Before Sim brought General Washington out of the barn, Aunt Polly was in readiness. She had heroically picked her finest bell-necked squash, and stood on the stoop in front of her house, her monstrous poke bonnet sitting up on her head, with a defiant air, and grasping in her hand that enormous vegetable, which might have been scooped out as a drinking-cup for one of the giants of the olden time.
At length Sim appeared, leading the old white horse up to the stump which served as a mounting-block, on which Aunt Polly established herself, with her skirts held closely about her, as if she were preparing for a dive.