“Not a bit of it,” Polly answered. “I was in my room near the attic stairs, and heard the squeals as they took out the things, and saw them bring ’em down to Miss Marsh’s room, and Mr. Reeves had put on a white bonnet with pink strings and a pair of stays, which looked like a saddle, and I heard ’em say the things were nearly a hundred years old, and belonged to that lady buried across the road. If I’se her, I’d appear to ’em, making fun of my clothes. They are to have a fancy dance and wear her things as far as they go. But, for the land’s sake, what’s the matter?” and she turned to Sherry, whose face was white as the lunch cloth and who was clutching a chair for support.
“Nothing much,” Sherry answered. “I did not sleep well and have a nervous headache. Go on and tell us of the fancy dance. When is it to be?”
Polly didn’t know. “We shall hear about it at lunch,” she said, and they did. The young people were all talking of the chest, wondering who could have moved it, and why, but soon dropping that for the more absorbing topic of the fancy dance to come off within a week, as at the end of that time some of them were to leave. People were to be invited from the different hotels in the vicinity; there was to be a string band from Fabyan’s, and the young ladies were to draw lots as to which should wear the dresses unearthed in the cedar chest, and which were in a good state of preservation. Twice a year they had been aired as long as Amos Marsh lived at Maplehurst, and on the occasion of his last visit there he had had them out, as Alex. remembered having been told by Bowles, who drove him from the station when he first visited the farm. The man had spoken of a “flowered silk,” and when, after lunch, Alex. went to Amy’s room to see the finery, he recognized the “flowered silk” in the heavy brocade at which the girls were looking with eager eyes, each hoping the right to wear it would fall upon herself. The lots were drawn and the brocade fell to Amy.
“Eureka!” she cried, holding the dress at arm’s length and pirouetting around the room. “I am in luck, but it needs a great deal of fixing to fit me, and who can do it?” Then, remembering how handy Sherry had been in helping her on the first night of her arrival, she continued: “I believe that girl who waits on us is just the one. I’ll have her up. Call her, Alex.”
He called her, and Sherry came, wondering why she was sent for, and starting when she saw the display on chairs and tables and the bed, the lovely brocade and the lace trimming, yellow with age, but showing how costly it must have been. The room was full of the sickly odor of clothes which had been long shut from the air, and Sherry felt it and held fast to the brass rod of the bedstead, while Amy explained what was wanted and asked if she could do it. Sherry knew she could, for she and Katy had always made their own dresses, but her first impulse was to decline. Then, remembering that she was there to obey, she signified her willingness to do what she could. “But not to-day, please,” she said. “My head aches; to-morrow I shall feel better.”
“To-morrow, then,” Amy replied; “and, by the way, we shall need you all day, and I will see that No. 4 waits upon us. Her table is next to ours.”
That night Sherry slept a quiet, dreamless sleep, and Miss Doane was not disturbed by noises over her head in the attic where the cedar chest stood open, with piles of things in it as yet untouched. The dresses were what were wanted for the present, and after breakfast Sherry presented herself in Amy’s room and asked what she was to do.
“Make this fit me. It is too big in some places and too small in others,” Amy said, putting on the brocade and examining herself before the mirror.
To Sherry it seemed like a wrong to the dead woman as she pinned and unpinned and ripped and basted and tried on, and when it came to the lace, which Amy said must be cut in two or three places to produce the desired effect, she ventured to say: “Can’t we arrange it in some other way? It seems a pity to cut it, and I keep thinking of the lady who used to wear it.”
Amy looked at her, wondering what possible interest she could have in the lady who used to wear it.