Again, as ten years before, Mrs. Thrift raised signaling eyebrows. She emitted an artificial and absurd, "Ahem!" Then—"Charlotte, run upstairs and help poor Carrie with her English exercise."
"She's doing sums, mother. I saw her at them not ten minutes ago."
"Then tell her to put her sums aside. Do you know, dear Mrs. Strapp, Carrie is quite amazing at sums, but I tell her she is not sent to Miss Tait's finishing school under heavy expense to learn to do sums. But she actually likes them. Does them by way of amusement. Can add a double column in her head, just like her father. But her English exercise is always a sorry affair.... M-m-m-m.... There, now, you were saying tiny buttons down the side of the leg——" Charlotte had gone.
When the war ended Charlotte was twenty-two. An unwed woman of twenty-two was palpably over-fastidious or undesirable. Twenty-five was the sere and withered leaf. And soon Charlotte was twenty-five—twenty-eight—thirty. Done for.
The patchwork silk quilt, laid aside unfinished in '61, was taken up again in '65. It became quite famous; a renowned work of art. Visitors who came to the house asked after it. "And how is the quilt getting on, dear Charlotte?" as a novelist is sounded about an opus with which he is struggling or a painter his canvas. Mrs. Hannan, the Lake Street milliner, saved all her pieces for Charlotte. Often there was a peck of them at a time. The quilt was patterned in blocks. Charlotte, very serious, would explain to the caller the plan of the block upon which she was at the moment engaged.
"This one has a purple satin center, you see. I always think purple is so rich, don't you? Then the next row will be white uncut velvet. Doesn't it have a sumptuous sound! Next blue velvet and the last row orange-colored silk." (No; not the same piece. Carrie had never relinquished her booty.) "Now, this next block is to be quite gay. It is almost my favorite. Cherry satin center—next, white velvet again—next, green velvet—and last, pink satin. Don't you think it will be sweet! I can scarcely wait until I begin that block."
The winged sweep of the fine black brows was ruffled by a frown of earnest concentration as she bent intently over the rags and scraps of shimmering stuffs. Her cheated fingers smoothed and caressed the satin surfaces as tenderly as though they lingered on a baby's cheek.
When, finally, it was finished—lined with turkey red and bound with red ribbon—Charlotte exhibited it at the Fair, following much persuasion by her friends. It took first prize among twenty-five silk quilts. A day of great triumph for Charlotte Thrift. The prize was a basket worth fully eight dollars.
CHAPTER IV
When Charlotte was thirty Carrie—twenty—married. After all, the innocent little indiscretion which had so thoroughly poisoned Charlotte's life was not to corrupt Carrie's matrimonial future, in spite of Mrs. Thrift's mournful prediction. Carrie, whose philosophy of life was based on that same finding's-keeping plan with which she had filched the bit of orange silk from her sister so many years before, married Samuel Payson, junior member of the firm of Thrift and Payson, Real Estate, Bonds and Mortgages. Charlotte, it may be remembered, had disdained to pick up the scrap of orange silk on which Carrie had swooped. Just so with Samuel Payson.