She laughed as, brushing the short hair up around her face, and dampening it before the glass, little ringlets nodded around the forehead, modifying its squareness.
"It's 'most too fixed-up to wear that way every day. But Lutty Williams fusses with a hot iron to get hers so."
Then, a new idea striking her, she opened the bureau drawer and took out a white apron with sleeves and long strings. It was a trifle difficult to get on, and still more so to button, but at last this was done, and the strings made into a very respectable bow at the back. Smoothing it carefully down in front, Martha was disappointed to see that it did not reach nearly so far over the brown delaine dress as she had expected. She took no thought of Jerusha's having let out a tuck in her dress since the apron was last worn.
Martha's gaze now reached to her shoes. She turned to the clock, and, taking out a pair of shoe-strings, sat down by the stove and, removing her shoes, threw the bits of broken strings into the fire and threaded in the new lacings, tying them snugly. Lutty Williams' shoes were black as well as her lacings!—again there was a feeling of disappointment.
But the dinner needed her attention, so she turned to finish setting the table, which Jerusha had arranged in part, before going home. A second time a thought seemed to strike her, and now she reached to the top drawer of the bureau and drew forth a white table-cloth. Carefully she placed the vase on the window-sill, and, taking off the dishes and putting them back in the cupboard, removed the red table-cloth, folded it and placed that, too, in the cupboard. Jerusha did not think much of white tablecloths, but it was Easter, and Easter, the minister had said, should show loving touches throughout the home, just as Jesus left his loving touch through the world.
With great care Martha draped the table with the white linen, and replaced the lily. How beautiful it looked now in its new surroundings!—too beautiful for the hacked white dishes Jerusha used. So a chair was placed in front of the green cupboard, and with precision in every movement the "sprigged" dishes were gotten down.
"Oh, if only it could be that way all the time!" Martha Matilda sighed, standing beside her carefully-arranged table with shining eyes. But the potatoes were brown and puffy, and the hand of the clock reached to just half-past one. She gave a glance around the room, grabbed her hat, and was off; it was time for her to meet her father at the bridge, as she always met him Sundays, when dinner was ready. No matter how much John Graham might enjoy lolling in the sun by the smelter door with "the boys," he never forgot the time when the brown hat was to be met down by the bridge. "A little close," was often said of John Graham. "A trifle sharp in getting the best of a bargain, but to be depended upon every time."
Martha saw her father's faded felt hat bobbing up over the further abutment, and she flew across the bridge. "Oh, I am so glad to see you!" she said, catching hold of one of his big hands and covering it with both of her small ones, as she danced along beside him.
"One'd 'most think I'd been to Ingy," said the man in what would have seemed a gruff voice to some. Then he glanced at the little figure by his side, and said in just the same every-day tone, out of which he was seldom drawn, "Might'ly fixed up, seems to me."
"It's Easter, you know, pa. I went to Sunday-school. Miss Mary's lily was there, and there was lots of evergreen, and the minister said I helped him preach. And oh, pa, you don't know how the girls did take me in! They sat up just as close!"