Samples!
A man’s mind shouldn’t be on clothes. He should have other things to think of.
There was Evans, for example. He had described the other night the boys’ club he was starting in Sherwood. “In the old pavilion, Jane. It will do as it is in summer, and in winter we’ll enclose it. And we are to have a baseball team, and play against the surrounding towns. You should see my little lads.”
She and Baldy had been much interested. The three of them had put their heads together as they sat on the porch of the little house, with the moon whitening the world, and the whippoorwill mourning far away in the swamp.
They had planned excitedly, and every word they had said had been warm with enthusiasm. They had been flushed, exultant. It would be a great thing for Sherwood.
That was the kind of thing to live for, to live with. Ideas. Effort. She had always known it. Yet for a moment, she had forgotten. Had thought of herself as—Curlylocks.
She flung up her hands in a sort of despair. There was no way out of it. She was bound to Frederick Towne by the favors she had accepted from him. And that settled it.
She went on feverishly with the packing of her shabby suitcase. She rather glorified in its shabbiness. At least it is mine own, was her attitude of mind.
As she leaned over it, the great ring that Frederick had given her swung back and forth on its ribbon. She tucked it into the neck of her frock but it would not stay. At last she took it off and was aware of a sense of freedom as if she had shed her shackles. It winked and blinked at her on the dresser, so she shut it in a drawer and was still aware of it shining in the darkness, balefully!
Briggs was not to come for her until four in the afternoon. She decided to go over to Castle Manor and talk to Mrs. Follette. She would take some strawberries as an excuse. The strawberries in the Castle Manor garden were never as perfect as those which Jane had planted. Evans said it was because Jane coaxed things into rosiness and roundness. But Jane had worked hard over the beds, and she had had her reward.