“You see,” she continued, “I hadn’t a chance for much dressin’ or thinkin’ about it; your pa was so weak that I had about all I could do to fix bitters and things, and manage to keep the breath of life in his body. And many’s the time when I thought he’d beat, and die right before my face and eyes in spite of me. Then he went off on that journey afore he was able, and I’ve always believed, and always shall, that he didn’t rightly know what he was about after that, for quite a spell. So now I think more than likely it would please him to have things kind of gay and lively. I ain’t said anything about it to Susan—she ha’n’t no special interest in dressing up, anyway, and she and I don’t always agree about what looks nice, but I think your pa would like it if I had a green silk—bright, rich green, you know, nothing dull and fady. I saw one when I was a girl—fact is, I sewed on it—and it was for a bride, too, and I said to myself then, says I, ‘If I’m ever a bride, I’ll have a dress as much like this as two peas.’ I’ve been a good while about it, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve got a beautiful red bow; that wide, rich-looking kind of ribbon; a woman give it to me for tending up to her poor girl afore she died. She had the consumption, and I took care of her off and on a good share of the fall, and she give me this ribbon. It’s real nice, though land knows I didn’t want pay for doing things for her poor girl. ’Twan’t pay, neither, for the matter of that; it was just to show they felt grateful, you know, and I’ve always set store by that ribbon. I’ve never wore it, because Susan she thought it wan’t suited to our way of livin’ and no more it wan’t, though we lived nice enough in a small way. Your pa never skimped us on money, though, land alive! I didn’t dream of his havin’ things about him like he has, and I was always for tryin’ to lay up, ’cause I didn’t know how much money he had, and I didn’t know but he’d come to poverty some day. Rich folks do, and I was for savin’, and Susan didn’t object. Susan is a good girl as ever was. And so the red bow is just as nice as ever it was—not a mite soiled nor nothing, and I think it would go lovely with a green silk dress, don’t you?”
“No,” said Ruth, severely and solemnly. Not another word could she have forced her white lips to say, and I don’t know how to explain to you what awful torture this talk was to her. The truth is, to those of you who do not, because of a fine subtle, inner sympathy, understand it already, it is utterly unexplainable.
“Land alive!” said Mrs. Erskine, startled by the brief, explosive answer, and by the white, set lips, “don’t you? Now, I thought you would. You dress so like a picture yourself, I thought you would know all about it, and your pa said you knew what was what as well as the next one.”
Think of Judge Erskine’s aristocratic lips delivering such a sentence as that!
“Now, I had a geranium once, when I was a girl. It was the only pretty thing I had in the world, and I set store by it, for more reasons than one. It was give to me by my own aunt on my father’s side. It was pretty nigh all she had to give, poor thing! They was dreadful poor like the rest of us, and she give me this the very winter she died. I had it up in my room, and it kept a blowing and blowing all winter long—I never see the like of that thing to blow! And I used to stand and look at it, just between daylight and dark. It stood right by my one window, where the last streak of daylight come in, and I used to squeeze in there between the table and the wall to make my button-holes, and when it got so dark I jest couldn’t take another stitch, I’d stand and look at the thing all in blow, and I thought I never see anything so pretty in all my life, and I made up my mind then and there, that a green silk dress, about the color of them leaves, and a red ribbon about the color of them blossoms, would be the prettiest thing to wear in the world. I got the bow a good many years ago, and I was always kind of savin’ on it up, waiting for the dress.” Just here there was the faintest little breath of a sigh. “But, then, if you don’t think it would be the thing, why I’m willing to leave it to you. Your pa said you’d see that everything was ship-shape.”
“I think,” said Ruth, and her voice was hollow, even to herself, “I think that my father’s taste would be a plain, black silk, with white lace at the throat. If you desire to please him, I am sure you will make that choice.”
“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Judge Erskine, and she couldn’t help looking a bit dismayed. “Land alive! do you think so? Black! why it will make folks think of a funeral, won’t it?”
“No,” said Ruth, “black is worn on all occasions by persons who know enough to wear it.” Then she arose. She had reached the utmost limit of endurance. Another sentence from this woman she felt would have driven her wild. Yet she was doomed to hear one more before she closed the door after herself.
“Well, now, if you honestly think it will be best, I s’pose I’ll agree to it, as your pa seemed to think things must go your way. But I don’t quite like it, jest because it seems kind of bad luck. I don’t believe them notions about black clothes at merry-makings, you know, though when I was a girl folks honestly thought so, and it seems kind of pokerish to run right into ’em. I never would begin to clean house of a Friday—some bad luck was sure to come; and as for seein’ the moon over my left shoulder, I won’t do it, now—not if I can help it. But black silk ain’t so funeral as bombazine and such, and I s’pose—”