"At least the saucer's safe," ventured Myra, after a pause. She had only just come to live with old Mrs. Bray. She wondered how she would take it. "Well—might's well sweep up the muss!"
Old Mrs. Bray spoke. Myra thought she detected a quiver in her voice:
"Pick 'em up," her mother-in-law directed, "and put 'em here in my apron." Myra obeyed. Old Mrs. Bray gathered up her apron and went away to her room. She did not emerge till nearly supper-time.
Once Myra had gone to her door. It was inhospitably closed. Myra thought she detected a faint chinking sound. "Now I wonder"—thought Myra—"is she agrievin' or asulkin'? I'd ruther it was asulkin'—an old pink chiny cup! I'd buy her another, only I s'pose it wouldn't make it up to her—Nellie's and all. Mebbe if I hurried and put off my waist, I could finish up her challis. She don't need the challis, and I do the waist. But mebbe it might take her mind off—losin' Nellie and then losin' the cup. I expect that come hard to Mother Bray."
Myra smoothed her hair and put on a fresh afternoon percale. To see Myra with her thin brown face, her slicked-back black hair which showed white threads like ravellings, in her afternoon house-dress of gray percale, one would never have taken her for a bride. Yet Myra had a very bridal feeling, sitting in her own home, with her own sewing, instead of running the machine in the shop, as she had done before her marriage. That it was, in reality, her husband's mother's home, and her husband's mother's sewing, scarcely altered the case. It was home, not shop. She had been married in August, when work fell slack. Now it was October. She had not broken anything until to-day.
Myra sewed and rocked and looked up at the framed portraits of Marvin and Nellie and Frank as children—the girl in queer plaid, and a locket; the boys in gilt-braided suits. Old and crude as the drawing was, it had a look of them—that steady, serious look of Marvin which he had never lost, and Nellie's—bold and managerial. Frank had died. Poor mother. She had known trouble.
At five, old Mrs. Bray came stiffly out. She had a curious, secretive air, not in the least mournful nor accusative, as Myra had feared. Myra held up the dress—a soft, gray challis with lavender pipings. Old Mrs. Bray's eyes widened like a pleased child's.
"Want to try it on?" suggested Myra.
"It ain't done!"
"To the last hook." She began to assist her mother into the new dress.