"It was—I think—for an infant's jacket," Mr. Bliss hazarded, looking sidelong at the door. These things were hard to bear; harder than Marietta knew; yet how gladly should he do it for her, on that very account. He turned an appealing glance on Miss Penny. "An infant's jacket would not, you think, require two pounds?" he asked.
"A jacket for your little Beauty Darlin', to be sure! She bought a pattern, too, I remember, a shell border, and then—don't you believe p'r'aps it was skeins she said, Mr. Bliss, instead of pounds? I presume most likely it was." Her voice was tender now, as if addressing a little child.
"You are probably right, Miss Penelope," said the minister, dejectedly. "I seem to have singularly little faculty for these matters. Two skeins—ah, yes! I perceive it is so written here on the envelope. I beg your pardon, Miss Penelope!"
"You've no need to, Mr. Bliss, not a mite!" cried Miss Penny. "We all make mistakes, and, if you never done anything worse than this, you'd be sure of the Kingdom. Not but what you are anyways, I expect. Gentlemen don't have any call to know about fancy work as a rule, especially a pastor, whose mind on higher things is set; you remember the hymn. There is those, though, that finds comfort in it, same as a woman doos. I knew a gentleman once who used to come and get his worsted of me just as regular! He crocheted for his nerves; helped him to sleep, so he thought, and it is real soothin', but he's dead and buried now. I often think, times when I hear of a man bein' nervous and crotchety about the house, there! I think, if he'd only set down and crochet a spell, or knit, one of the two, what a comfort it would be to him and his folks. We're made as we are, though; that's right. Was there anything more, Mr. Bliss? Twenty cents; thank you, sir. Real pleased you came in; call again, won't you? Good morning!"
Miss Penny looked anxiously after the minister as he walked away. "I do hope he'll get that home safe!" she said. "I set out to ask him if he didn't think he'd better put it in his pocket, but I was afraid he might think me forth-puttin'. Like as not he'll forget every single thing about it, and drop it right in the street. There! I don't see why men-folks is so forgetful, do you, Sister? Not that they are all alike, of course."
"Some ways they are," said Miss Prudence.
Miss Prudence was invisible, but the door between the shop and her sanctum was always ajar, for she liked to hear what was going on.
"I never see the man yet that I'd trust to carry a parcel home; not a small parcel, that is. If it's a whole dress, he'll take it all right, if he takes it at all; but give him a small parcel that wants to be carried careful, and he'll drop it, or else scrunch it up in his pocket and forget it. I've got to run up these brea'ths now; Miss Wax is comin' at eleven to try on."
There was a silence, broken only by the cheerful whir of the sewing-machine, and the still more cheerful voice of Miss Penny cooing to her birds. She hopped from one cage to another, feeding, stroking, caressing.
"You're lookin' dumpy to-day, darlin'," she said, addressing a rather battered-looking mino bird. "There! the fact is, you ain't so young as once you was. You're like the rest of us, only you don't know it, and we do—some of us! Here's a nice bit of egg for you, Beauty; that'll shine you up some, though I do expect you've seen your best days. Luella Slocum told me she expected me to make this bird over as good as new, Sister. I told her I guessed what ailed him was the same as did the rest of us. Stop the clock tickin', I told her, and she'd stop his trouble and hers as well. She was none too well pleased. She'd just got her a new front from Miss Wax, and not a scrap of gray in it. She'd ought to sing 'Backward, turn backward,' if anybody ought. There!" The exclamation had a note of dismay in it.