“It is nice, isn’t it?”
The fate that took away every other comfort and beauty and every last luxury spared her tresses.
They had not even turned white except for certain little streaks—a fine line of silver here and there that glistened like the threads of the dome-spider’s gossamer shining in the morning dew when the sunbeams just rake the lawn.
She would lay her hair against her cheeks and against her lips and she would hold it up to RoBards to kiss, and laugh a wild little laugh.
He loved it as she did, and thought it miraculous that so many strands of such weave should be spun from that head of hers to drip about her beauty.
Then she would forget it in another call to martyrdom. Her bravery astounded her husband and her brave son. It was the courage of the ancient heretic women who had smiled amid the flames of the slow green fagots that zealots chose for their peculiar wretchedness.
Sometimes she would seem to be whispering something to herself and RoBards would bend down to catch the words. Usually she was crooning that song:
“We-e-e-eave no mo-o-ore silks, ye Ly-y-y-ons loo-oo-ooms.
To deck our girls for ga-a-ay delights.”
The war was over, the looms were astream with silks again, but not for Patty Jessamine RoBards.