“I knew I couldn’t give you nothing more useful, nor purtier,” she continued, complacently, while Jane stood looking at her in confused surprise. “’Tain’t no common quilt—that was a part of my own settin’ out; I pieced it with these two hands. I’ve got another jest like it, only the middle is pink and blue; but I had to keep that,” sinking her voice to a whisper, “for ’tain’t best to leave oneself quite destitute.”
Jane tried to murmur something, but between suppressed mirth and confusion she was dumb.
“You see, it’s so much better for you than that carpet we talked about, that ain’t near done, and I’m so slow; besides, young folks oughtn’t to cosset themselves up with such things. Scrubbing floors is the wholesomest work you can have, and I really think carpets are unhealthy; they make you ketch cold every time you go into the air.”
Jane expressed her perfect satisfaction with the gift, and Aunt Polly fell into a confidential conversation with her, and before they returned to the kitchen had revealed her intended marriage with Sim White, under promise of proposed secrecy. Jane was faithful to her pledge, but as Aunt Polly, in the course of the afternoon, was closeted with Mary and the old grandmother, each in her turn, and confided the interesting news to both, under the same vow of solemn silence, Jane’s fidelity did not meet with its due reward.
Before four o’clock everything was prepared, and the whole house set in order.
“Wal,” said Aunt Polly, glancing with pride at the rows of pies and huge piles of doughnuts and cakes; “if anybody wants nicer fixin’s than these, let them get ’em up, that’s all. If ever I get married—not that I say I’m goin’ to—but if I ever should, I won’t have no stingy doin’s—good eatin’ and plenty of it’ll be had, now I tell you.”
At last Mary escaped, to obtain a few quiet moments for reflection; and Jane retired to the other room, to give the finishing touches to the simple bridal attire spread out upon the coverlet. Aunt Polly and Grandmother Derwent sat down in front of the door, to indulge in a quiet chat, and when the girls were fairly out of sight, Aunt Polly took sundry surreptitious pinches of snuff from the old lady’s box, by no means with the air of a novice, but like a woman refreshing herself after a season of rigid self-denial.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CHIEF’S BURIAL
For a full half-hour Queen Esther sat motionless in the chill of that appalling silence, her eyes fixed upon the weapons of death at her feet with a dull glare, more terrible than the fiercest rage of passion.
She rose slowly, at length, laid the rifle and scalping-knife carefully aside, and clutching the tomahawk of her dead son in her hand, passed noiselessly out of the tent. At the entrance she met the chief, Gi-en-gwa-tah, motioned him to follow with a stern gesture of command, and moved on towards the roused encampment, issuing her brief orders in a voice hard as iron.