Clover and Blue Grass

by Eliza Calvert Hall

Anna Belle held the silk and lace on her outstretched hands and carried it up-stairs as tenderly as she would have carried a newborn babe. She lingered in her room a long time and came down silent and dreamy-eyed. All the afternoon she embroidered leaf and flower on the linen gown, while in imagination she was fashioning a wedding robe of silk and lace and beholding herself a bride. When the clock struck five, Mrs. Williams rose hurriedly from her chair and gathered up the lapful of mending.

"Go up-stairs, Anna Belle," she commanded, "and put on your blue muslin."

Anna Belle looked surprised. "Is any company coming?" she asked.

"What if there isn't?" replied her mother. "Don't you suppose I like to see you lookin' nice?" She walked out to the kitchen and began preparing the evening meal. All the afternoon a strange nervousness had been growing on her. She was beginning to understand the momentousness of her morning interview with Mrs. Martin, and she saw herself as one who has risked all on a single throw. She had laid bare to Henry's mother the sacred desires of her own mother-heart and the yet more sacred desires of her daughter's maiden-heart. What if this humiliation should be to no purpose? Or, worse still, suppose she had misinterpreted the fragments of conversation that she had overheard. Suppose Henry's visits were after all only friendly ones? Her hands trembled, and her whole body was in a hot flush of fear and apprehension. She glanced at the kitchen clock.

"It won't be long till I know," she murmured. "If Henry's mother falls in with my plans, Henry'll come to see Anna Belle to-night."

She tried to reassure herself by recalling all that gentle Mrs. Martin had said, but as the moments passed, her apprehension grew, and when she tried to eat, the food almost choked her.

As soon as the dishes were washed, Anna Belle stole out to the front porch. She did not expect her lover to-night, but at least she could sit in the gathering dusk, thinking of Henry and of that wonderful wedding gown. Meanwhile Mrs. Williams was up-stairs, leaning from her bedroom window, listening for Henry's step and peering anxiously in the direction from which Henry must come. How slow the minutes were! The kitchen clock struck seven. Half-past seven was Henry's usual hour, but surely to-night he would come earlier. Ten minutes passed. She heard footsteps up the street, and her heart began to beat like a girl's. Nearer the footsteps sounded. Could that quick, firm tread be Henry's? Henry was usually rather slow of speech and movement. A hand was on the latch of the gate. She heard Anna Belle's exclamation of surprise and pleasure, then Henry's laugh and Henry's voice.

In the love affairs of her daughter, every mother finds a resurrection of her own youthful romance, no matter how long it may have been buried; and as the young man's tones, low, earnest and charged with a lover's joy, rose on the summer air, Anna Belle's mother turned away from the window, and covering her face with her hands, tried to beat back a tide of emotions that have no place in the heart of middle age. The moments passed uncounted now, and twilight had faded into night before she heard Anna Belle's voice calling from below:

"Mother! Where are you, Mother? Come right down. Henry wants to see you;" and like one who walks in her sleep she obeyed the summons.

They stood before her, hand in hand, smiling, breathless, encircled by the aura of love's young dream; but there was a far-away look in Margaret Williams' eyes, as she looked at their radiant faces. How many years was it since she and Anna Belle's father had stood before her mother! And now that mother's name was carved on a graveyard stone, and she was in her mother's place with a mother's blessing in her hands for young lovers.