“My mother’s wedding clothes!” Taisie smiled sadly. “I brought them along because I had no place to leave them. My own are all worn out.”
“Well, that’s all right, my dear. We got to fix you up a little first, you’re so dusty. I reckon my big dishpan will do. You’d think they’d have washtubs over at the store, but they haven’t; not one. There ain’t a bathtub in the whole state of Kansas, and never was. Plenty of shooting, but mighty little washing.”
She pushed Taisie down into a kitchen chair and tenderly removed her broad-brimmed hat. Thus was revealed the heavy queue of hair that lay down the girl’s neck and shoulders.
“Did you ever!” exclaimed Lou Gore. “Lemme cut that string off.” Her scissors were at her belt; a snip or two, a shake, a running through of her fingers, and the glorious flood of Anastasie Lockhart’s tresses fell about her as she sat, a Godiva in a cotton shirt.
“I am going to take off that shirt, my dear,” said Lou Gore, and leaned Taisie’s head against her own bosom. She caught the garment by the lower edge and left the girl sitting, tousled, her arms now huddled to her.
“My Lord, my dear,” exclaimed Lou Gore, “you’re a beauty! You don’t belong here. And wedding clothes? You say you’ve got wedding clothes out in the cart? You’ll need them. Look at that hair! My dear, how do you make it curl up on the end that way?”
It was Milly who explained: “It just quoil up on de fur end dat way nacherl. She got more hair den ary lady in Texas.”
Lou Gore stood back and looked at Taisie once more.
“My dear,” said she, “you are a beauty! What’s more, you are good. Give me a hour or two with you fixed up in woman clothes and I’ll marry you to any man you’ll point out to me.”
“In her trunk, I done told you,” interrupted Milly, “she got all kind o’ clothes; all silk—pink an’ blue an’ everything. Her maw had the pertiest clothes in Texas. She brung her clothes out from N’Awlins. You-all knows quality, ma’am.”