“Charm string--what’s a charm string?”
“Wait once. I’ll show you.”
The woman left the room. They heard her tramp about up-stairs and soon she returned with a long string of buttons threaded closely together and forming a heavy cable.
“Oh, let me see! Ain’t that nice!” exclaimed Amanda. “Where did you ever get so many buttons and all different?”
“We used to beg them. When I was a girl everybody mostly had a charm string. I kept puttin’ buttons on mine till I was well up in my twenties, then the string was full and big so I stopped. I used to hang it over the looking glass in the parlor and everybody that came looked at it.”
Amanda fingered the charm string interestedly. Antique buttons, iridescent, golden, glimmering, some with carved flowers, others globules of colored glass, many of them with quaint filigree brass mounting over colored background, a few G. A. R. buttons from old uniforms, speckled china ones like portions of bird eggs--all strung together and each one having a history to the little old eccentric woman who had cherished them through many years.
“This one Martin Landis give me for the string and this one is from Jonas’ wedding jacket and this pretty blue glass one a girl gave me that’s dead this long a’ready.”
“Oh"--Amanda’s eyes shone. She turned to her mother, “Did you ever have a charm string, Mom?”
“Yes. A pretty one. But I let you play with it when you were a baby and the string got broke and the buttons put in the box or lost.”
“Ach, but that spites me. I’d like to see it and have you tell where the buttons come from. I like old things like that, I do.”