The women of the little village had met at a quilting party at ten o'clock with Mrs. Martin Waddell. There Sarah had had a seat at the frame and heard all the gossip of the countryside. The nimble fingered Ann Rutledge—a daughter of the tavern folk—had sat beside her. Ann was a slender, good-looking girl of seventeen with blue eyes and a rich crown of auburn hair and a fair skin well browned by the sunlight. She was the most dexterous needle worker in New Salem. It was Mrs. Peter Lukins, a very lean, red haired woman with only one eye which missed no matrimonial prospect—who put the ball in play so to speak.
"Ann, if Honest Abe gits you, you'll have to spend the first three months makin' a pair o' breeches for him. It'll be a mile o' sewin'."
"I reckon she'd have to spend the rest o' her life keepin' the buttons on 'em," said Mrs. John Cameron.
"Abe doesn't want me and I don't want Abe so I reckon some other girl will have to make his breeches," said Ann.
"My lord! but he's humbly," said Mrs. Alexander Ferguson.
"Han'some is that han'some does," Mrs. Martin Waddell remarked. "I don't know anybody that does han'somer."
"Han'some is that han'some looks I say," Mrs. Lukins continued with a dreamy look in her eye.
"I like a man that'll bear inspection—up an' a comin' an' neat an' trim as a buck deer," Mrs. Ferguson confessed.
"An' the first ye know he's up an' a goin'," said Mrs. Samuel Hill. "An then all ye have to look at is a family o' children an' the empty bread box."
"Wait until Abe has shed his coat an' is filled out a little. He'll be a good-lookin' man an' I wouldn't wonder," Mrs. Waddell maintained.