Miss Clegg echoed the sigh.
"There never was a truer sayin' 'n' the one 't things goes by contraries," she continued presently. "Here I've been figgerin' on bein' so happy married, 'n' instid o' that I find myself missin' father every few minutes. There was lots o' good about father, particular when he was asleep. I'd got so used to his stayin' where I put him 't I don't know 's I c'd ever get used to a man 's could get about. 'F I wanted to talk, father was always there to listen, 'n' 'f he wanted to talk I c'd always go downstairs. He didn't never have but one button to keep sewed on 'n' no stockings to darn a tall. 'N' all the time there was all them nice gover'ment bonds savin' up for me in his desk! No, I sha'n't consider no more as to gettin' married. While it looked discouragin' I hung on 'n' never give up hope, but I sh'd be showin' very little o' my natural share o' brains 'f I didn't know 's plain 's the moon above 't 'f I get to be eighty 'n' the fancy takes me I c'n easy get a husband any day with those bonds. While I couldn't seem to lay hands on no man I was wild to have one—now 't I know I c'n have any man 't I fancy, I don't want no man a tall. It'll always be a pleasure to look back on my love-makin', 'n' I wouldn't be no woman 'f down in the bottom of my heart I wasn't some pleased over havin' 's good 's had four offers inside o' the same week. But I might o' married, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' Heaven might o' seen fit to give me such a son 's he give you, 'n' 'f I hadn't no other reason for remainin' single that alone 'd be s'fficient. After all, the Lord said 'It is not good for man to be alone,' but He left a woman free to use her common sense 'n' I sh'll use mine right now. I've folded up the pink nightgown, 'n' I'm thinkin' very seriously o' givin' it to Amelia Fitch, 'n' I'll speak out frank 'n' open 'n' tell her 'n' everybody else 't I don't envy no woman—not now 'n' not never."
Mrs. Lathrop chewed her clover.
II
MISS CLEGG'S ADOPTED
It was an evening in early October,—one of those first frosty nights when a bright wood fire is so agreeable to contemplate and so more than agreeable to sit in front of. Susan Clegg sat in front of hers, and doubtless thoroughly appreciated its cheerful warmth, but it cannot be said that she took any time to contemplate it, for her gaze was altogether riveted upon the stocking which she was knitting, and which appeared—for the time being—to absorb completely that persevering energy which was the dominant note of her character.
But still the beauty and brilliancy of the leaping flames were not altogether lost upon an unseeing world, for there was another present beside Susan, and that other was full to overflowing with the power of silent admiration. Her little black beady eyes stared at the dancing lights that leapt from each burning log in a species of rapt absorption, and it was only semi-occasionally that she turned them back upon the work which lay upon her lap. Mrs. Lathrop (for of course it was Mrs. Lathrop) was matching scraps for a "crazy" sofa-pillow, and there was something as touchingly characteristic in the calmness and deliberation of her matching as there was in the wild whirl which Susan's stocking received whenever that lady felt the moment had come to alter her needles. For Susan, when she knit, knit fast and furiously, whereas Mrs. Lathrop's main joy in relation to labor lay in the sensation that she was preparing to undertake it. The sofa-pillow had been conceived—some eighteen months before—as a crazy-quilt, but all of us who have entertained such friends unawares know that the size of their quilts depended wholly upon the wealth of our scrap-bags, and in the case of Mrs. Lathrop's friends their silk and satin resources had soon forced the reduction of her quilt into a sofa-pillow, and indeed the poor lady had during the first weeks felt a direful dread that the final result would be only a pin-cushion. She had begun the task with the idea of keeping it for "pick-up" work, and during the eighteen months since its beginning she had picked it up so rarely that after a year and a half of "matching" it was not yet matched. It goes without saying that Miss Clegg had very little sympathy with her friend's fancy-work and despised the slowness of its progress, but her contempt had no effect whatever upon Mrs. Lathrop, whose friendship was of that quality the basis of which knows not the sensation of being shaken.
So the older woman sat before the fire, and sometimes stared long upon its glow, and sometimes thoughtfully drew two bits of silk from her bag and disposed them side by side to the end that she might calmly and dispassionately judge the advisability of joining them together forever, while the younger woman knit madly away without an instant's loss or a second's pause.
Mrs. Lathrop was thinking very seriously of pinning a green stripe to a yellow polka-dotted weave which had once formed part of Mrs. Macy's mother's christening-robe, when Susan opened her lips and addressed her. The attack was so sudden that the proprietor of the crazy-work started violently and dropped the piece of the christening-robe; but the slight accident had no effect upon her friend.