Aunt Polly knew nothing of this, but kept spinning on—tread, tread, tread—now dipping her fingers in the dried shell of a mock-orange, that hung full of water to the distaff, and daintily moistening the flax as it ran through them—now stopping to change the thread on her flyer, and off again—hum—hum—with a smile of self-satisfaction that was pleasant to behold.
After this little display, the good landlady tried her hand at the loom, where a linen web was in progress of completion; but finding the quill-box empty, she called out with her cheerful voice for Jane to come and wind some quills, for she was dying to try her hand at the shuttle, if it was only to show them how things were done when she was a girl.
Jane could not altogether resist this good humor; still she came forward, half pouting, dragged the lumbering old swifts out from under the loom, banded her quill wheel, and soon supplied the empty shuttle, which Aunt Polly was so impatient to use.
Now there was a clatter indeed; the treadles rose and fell with grating moans beneath those resolute feet; the rude gearing shrieked on its pulleys; the shuttle flew in and out, now darting into the weaver’s right hand—now into the left, while the lathe banged away, and the old loom trembled in all its timbers.
“That’s right—look on, girls,” cried the old maid with enthusiasm. “It’ll be a good while, I reckon, before either of you can come up to this; but ‘live and learn’ is a good saying. Your grandmother and I’ve seen the time when we broke more threads with awkward throws than we knew how to mend with two thumbs and eight fingers. Just see this shuttle fly—isn’t it beautiful? Oh, girls, there’s nothing like work—it keeps the body healthy, and the soul out of mischief. Wind away, Janey, it’ll do you lots of good; we’ll keep at it till Miss Derwent has washed up the morning dishes; an extra yard’ll help her along wonderfully—that’s the music—keep the old wheel a-going—more quills—more quills!”
Jane took a double handful of quills from her lap and brought them to the loom. While Aunt Polly was putting one in her shuttle, she looked keenly in the young girl’s face, shook her head, and went to work again more vigorously than before. Mary saw this, and was satisfied that the old maid had some deeper object in her visit than these experiments with her grandmother’s wheel and loom.
But Aunt Polly went on with her work, becoming more and more excited with every fling of the shuttle. She let out her web and rolled her cloth-beam eight or nine times before her enthusiasm began to flag.
“There,” she said at last, laying the empty shuttle daintily upon the cloth she had woven, and forcing herself out from the slanting seat, “if anybody wants an evener yard of cloth than that, let them weave it, I say. Now, Janey, come and show me your garden, and let’s see if it’s as forward as mine. I’ve had lettuce and peppergrass up this week.”
Aunt Polly strode toward the door as she spoke, and Jane followed her.
“Now,” said the old maid, facing round as they reached the garden, “you needn’t suppose that I took Gineral Washington from the plough, and come up to Monockonok just to see you all. I should have waited till after planting-time for that; but I heard something last night that worried me more than a little, and I want to know what it means, for we marriageable females ought to stand by each other. How comes it, Jane Derwent, that the young men in my bar-room talk about you with their loose tongues, and dare to drink your health in glasses of corn whiskey which they sometimes forget to pay for?”