“You see, ours was a large family, and, from time to time, many of us were taken away—‘called home,’ you might say—and those that went left to those that remained a good many relics and keepsakes like. They came to mother first, and after mother’s death they came to me, and I had ’em round in bureau drawers and bandboxes and trunks, and they was in the way when I was cleaning house or making changes of arrangements, and I won’t say that such as was fabrics wasn’t attracting moths. But I couldn’t think of no way to remedy it. Till suddenly—let’s see, ’twas eleven weeks ago last Tuesday—the idea came to me, and I grouped ’em together, like you see ’em here—this tribute.”
Her yardstick touched the basket lovingly, as she went on: “That banana, on the extreme left, contains my grandfather’s gold-bowed spectacles, jest as he used to wear ’em. Gran’pa grew terrible deaf when he got to be an old man, and so he never heard a team coming up behind him one day when mother’d sent him down to the store for a loaf of bread. Miss Jenkins, them glasses was on his nose just as lifelike when they brought him in to us! My mother’s wedding ring is in that greengage plum next to the banana, and aunt Sophia Babcock’s is in that damson, a little below to the right.
“You see that peach? Pretty lifelike, I call it—well, there ain’t anything in it yet, but my great-uncle Bradly’s shirtstuds are in the Bartlett pear, just beyond, and that orange contains a Honiton lace collar that my mother wore the day she was married.
“And this Baldwin apple”—her voice grew intimate—“has in it some little relics of my own uncle Aaron Roscoe. He was a good man, and he felt the call early, and he journeyed to heathen lands to carry the glad tidings, and we never heard from him again—till quite recent, when these little relics was sent back.
“Do you remember my brother Willy? Gracious, no! What was I thinking of? Of course you don’t—your aunt Mary’d remember him, though. He was my youngest brother, and a great hand for all sorts of frolic and fun. Well, it’s more’n thirty years ago, but it seems just yesterday that he fell in the mill pond. Sister Coretta was with him, and she’d let him get out of her sight—which she hadn’t ought to—but, childlike, she’d got to playing with the shavings, and sticking ’em over her ears, and when she sensed things Willy wa’n’t nowhere to be found. They drawed off the water, and there he was, poor little thing, and they brought him home and laid him on the kitchen table, and then mother and I, we went through his pockets to see what there was, and there we found a bag of marbles, just as he’d had ’em—and he was a great hand for marbles. Well, mother she kept ’em in her bureau drawer for years, and whenever she’d open the bureau drawer it would make her feel bad, ’cause she’d think of Willy, and after mother’s death it made me feel bad to see ’em, ’cause I’d think of Willy and mother, too. Yet, somehow, I couldn’t think of no way to put ’em in here till suddenly it occurred to me in the night—’twas three weeks ago come Friday—and I got up then and there and I covered ’em each with purple silk and made ’em into that bunch of grapes on the extreme right.”
Miss Roscoe turned to her audience, her face rapt, as is the face of one who has gazed on a masterpiece. Annie recognized that now or never was her chance to state the errand that had brought her, to break through the strong reluctance that had held her at bay through the interview. She rose and held out her hand.
“It is—wonderful,” she looked toward the memorial, “and I can’t tell you how good it is of you to explain it all to me. I envy you the power you have of making—wonderful things.” The adjective crowded out every other in her vocabulary. “But I really came to ask you to do something for me, Miss Roscoe,” she smiled at the sphinxlike figure. “I’ve been getting up a sort of fair, and it’s going to be a great success—everybody in the village has promised to help, and my New York friends from Pungville are to give a sort of entertainment. I thought, you know—that you’d like to help, too, so I came to see what you’d be willing to do. We mean to have a sort of raffle.”
Miss Roscoe maintained her air of pathetic sternness.
“And wouldn’t you like to give something that we could take shares in—something, perhaps, that you have made—one of your what-not jars, or, if you’re very generous, why not the ‘Memorial Fruit Piece’?”
She stopped, somewhat staggered by the daring of her own suggestion. Miss Pamela had replaced the yardstick in its corner, and Annie was conscious of a vague relief when it was out of the way. She rested her hand on the Bo-Peep chair and waited.