“Weavers,” says she. “They set at the back of their frame and never see the right side of their work till the picture is finished, and each color they weave in has twenty different shades.”
“How you talk!” says I, and seein’ she had a kind of a knowin’ look, as if she would understand episodin’; (I hate to episode to anybody that don’t know what I’m a doin’.) I says to her, “That is a good deal like our lives, haint it; we set in the dark a weavin’ in our actions day by day, every act havin’ more’n forty different shades and motives to it, and we can’t tell how the picture looks from the other side till our work is done, and the frame laid down.”
“That is so,” says she. And then we both went to look at ’em, and Josiah went too; and such weavin’ I never see before, nor never expect to again. One of ’em was Mrs. Penelope settin’ a weavin’ her web. A likely creeter she was. After her husband was dragged off to war she would set and weave all day, and rip it all out at night, for she had promised to marry again when she had got her weavin’ done; and hated to. I have heerd Thomas J. read about her, and always took right to her. We had jest finished lookin’ at her, and I was a goin’ to tackle some of the pictures, when a slimmish sort of a girl, by the side of us says to another one, in reply to a question:
“Yes, I have jest come from there; it is the greatest exhibition of Antique art ever seen in this country. Pottery, crockery ware, marbles, and jewelry, twenty-three hundred years old, some of it.”
Josiah hunched me, and give me a wink; as excited and agitated a wink as I ever see wunk. And says I, “What is the matter Josiah, you scare me.”
Says he in a loud excitable whisper:
“Now is my time, Samantha. You have wanted me to buy sunthin’ for Tirzah Ann to remember the Sentinal by, and I can probable git some things here cheap as dirt, if they are as old as that, and they’ll be jest as good for her as new; they’ll last till she gits sick of ’em. I will see old Antique, and try to make a dicker with him.”
Says I, “If I had a only girl by my first wife, and was as well off as you be, I wouldn’t try to git second hand jewelry or old crockery for ’em, because I could git ’em for little or nothin’.”
But he was sot on it, and so we went in and looked round, tryin’ to find sunthin’ that would suit her. There was lots and lots of things, but I couldn’t see a article that I thought she would want and told him so; there was some big platters with humbly faces painted on ’em, and bowls and vases and jars. One little bowl was marked “Anno Jubilee 1600,” and Josiah says, “Don’t you s’pose that would do, Samantha? S’posen Ann has used it, she haint hurt it, and it would be handy to feed the—”
Says I, “Josiah Allen, it don’t look half so well as bowls she has got by her now.”