The two heads bent over the bundle—the girl's with its light hair in its first putting up, the woman's with its graying hair folded under the white cap.
"Here"—Mother Bab turned the bundle upside down and fingered the scraps with that loving way of those who are dreaming of long departed days and touching a relic of those cherished hours—"this white calico with the little pink dots was the first dress any one gave me. Grandmother Hoerner made it for me, all by hand. Funny, wasn't it, the way they used to put colored dresses on wee babies! See, here are pink calico ones and white with red figures and a few blue ones. I wore all these when I was a baby. Then when I grew older these; they are much prettier. This red delaine I wore to a spelling bee when I was about sixteen and I got a book for a prize for standing up next to last. This red and black checked debaige I can see yet. It had an overskirt on it trimmed with little ruffles. This purple cashmere with the yellow sprigs in it I had all trimmed with narrow black velvet ribbon. I'll never forget that dress—I wore it the day I met David's father."
"Oh, you must have looked lovely!"
"He said so." She smiled; her eyes looked beyond Phœbe, back to the golden days of her youth when Love had come to her to bless and to abide with her long beyond the tarrying of the spirit in the flesh. "He said I looked nice. I met him the first time I wore the purple dress. It was at a corn-husking party at Jerry Grumb's barn. Some man played the fiddle and we danced."
"Danced!" echoed Phœbe.
"Yes, danced. But just the old-fashioned Virginia reel. We had cider and apples and cake and pie for our treat and we went home at ten o'clock! David walked home with me in the moonlight and I guess we liked each other from the first. We were married the next year, then we both turned plain."
"Were you ever sorry, Mother Bab?"
"That I married him, or that I turned plain?"
"Yes. Both, I mean."
"No, never sorry once, Phœbe, about either. We were happy together. And about turning plain, why, I wasn't sorry either."