The girl was tempted to tell her of the gossip she had heard, but it suddenly seemed small and not worth while. She had already told her that Aunt Susan had her promise to come in time for dinner; it occurred to her to tell her of Nathan’s attitude toward them for their unfriendly neglect, but that too seemed unnecessary and trivial since they were going. On that point Elizabeth did not intend to give in an inch: she was going, even if John was cross about it.
“Yes, he will go without me, for I’ll see that he does,” Mrs. Hunter assured her, and with that Elizabeth was content.
Taking the baby to her own room, she undressed and bathed him and then arrayed him in the daintiest white dress she had for him, determined that Aunt Susan should see him at his best. As she nursed him so that he would drop off to sleep till they were ready to go, she looked long and earnestly at the soft skin and dark lashes of his baby face and realized as she had never done before the loneliness of the old couple whom they were going to visit. The little Katie of that house had been taken from them at about this age. A sob arose in Elizabeth’s throat when she considered how they had besought her for an opportunity to pour the dammed-up stream of their love at the feet of this child, and how slighted their efforts had been.
Jack was wide-eyed and would not sleep, and after losing much valuable time his mother set him in the middle of the bed and began her own preparations. As she looked about for something suitable to wear, she saw a simple white percale with red dots scattered over it, which she had worn the summer she had lived in Aunt Susan’s house. So little had she gone out and so free from personal vanity was she that it was still eligible to best wear. Besides, it had associations that were pleasant.
“Why, I made it in Aunt Susan’s own house,” she said aloud.
She looked down at it wistfully; those had been happy days.
A sudden impulse made her drop her heavy hair from its coil high on her head and, picking up her comb, divide it with deft movement. Brushing it into shape, she braided it as of old, in two braids, and then fished with rapturous fingers in her ribbon box for the bows she had always worn with that dress. When the bows were tied she put the braids back with a characteristic toss of the head and stood looking at herself in the glass.
“There now, he can’t be cross after that,” she said, feeling more as if she were her real self than she had done for many months.
Jack was restless and cried. Elizabeth turned to him with a start.
“You blessed baby! Your mother was way off and had forgotten that there was such a small person as you.”