But we tapped it once again, just to make sure it knew its own mind. After it had wiggled giddily round as before, the long hand stopped midway between “Set Fair” and “Very Dry.” Of course that confirmed our former calculations, and we got out our new summer hats, and left our umbrellas at home. Virginia had worn her new hat indoors most of the previous day, in order to get her money’s worth out of it, because she said she never got her money’s worth out of any of her garments, save her raincoat and her umbrella. [N.B.—Is an umbrella a garment?]
It was market day when we got there, and all the town was of course wending its way either to or from the market-place. One of the very first people we ran against was Mrs. Zebadiah Price; but, to our surprise, she was wearing neither my black cloth skirt nor Ursula’s black blouse. On the contrary, she was in quite gay attire—a brown coat and skirt, a blue blouse, a lace collar, a string of pearls as large as marbles, and a tuscan straw hat trimmed with roses and purple geraniums. I had known her in the past, when she lived in the village; so I stopped and spoke to her.
“I was so very sorry to hear of your sad trouble,” I began. Yet the subdued tones I used and felt necessary to the occasion seemed curiously out of place beside all that market-day finery.
“Yes, thank you, m’m; it did upset me awful,” she said, looking very woe-begone.
“I’m sure it did,” I said feelingly.
“You wouldn’t believe how I fretted over ’un. Seems kind o’ foolish I s’pose when I’ve got the children. But I got that attached to ’un.”
“I can quite understand it,” I murmured sympathetically. “After all, children can’t take the place of the one that is gone.”
“No, m’m; that’s what I say.”
“And it was very sudden, wasn’t it?”