“A sampler? Really Dad! Where is it?” Babs demanded impatiently. “I have never seen one in the attic.”
“Well, it was there. In an old trunk; the one with the hobbed-nail cover, you know. But you don’t spend as much time in the attic as I imagine some girls do, Babby. Guess your old dad keeps you too busy with his bugs,” the doctor murmured.
“You don’t either Dad. Where is that sampler?”
“Just give me a chance and I’ll get it,” the doctor answered, as if he had not had plenty of chance.
But at last he left his chair and went over to the old walnut bookcase. From the bottom, where the stained-glass door hid the big shelves, he drew out the old heirloom.
“It was your great-great grandmother’s,” he told his daughter, “and it’s pretty old. I wonder it hasn’t fallen apart,” he reasoned, as he held the little mahogany frame at arm’s length for his daughter’s inspection.
“How quaint!” she exclaimed, without realizing she was using the term the girls always joked Lida about. “Isn’t it finely embroidered?”
“I thought you would like it,” her father said, a ring of satisfaction in his tone. “Well, I was talking to David Hunt this morning, our honorable mayor you know, and he’s all keyed up over your Community House show. He says there isn’t a doubt but the place will be given to the borough now. I guess Mary-Louise Trainor knew what she was doing when she started her Old Home Week. She got all the women interested with their patchwork quilts,” the doctor chuckled, “and then she got you girls busy. What this old beach doesn’t know about heirlooms and family skeletons when the show is over won’t be worth knowing,” he finished jokingly.
But Barbara was looking intently at the sampler. So this had been the delicate handwork of the great-great grandmother. The faded silks and worsteds still held enough color to show the glory that had been woven into the letters, the symbols, and the flaring peacock.
“And I hate to sew or embroider,” Barbara said aloud, “so I guess I don’t take after grandmother. Here’s her name in the corner. ‘Mary Nelson, age 16 years 1831,’” she read. “That’s almost one hundred years ago.”