She gasped. Both women gave a frightened start.
“No; ’course I don’t mean that,” she added hastily. “I jes’ mean you love ’em so that it don’t seem no ways right for ’em to have to grow up to what you see in front of ’em.”
“Well, we better quit talkin’ an’ lay out th’ baby’s things. ’Spose we look in the bureau in the bedroom.”
They moved again to the inner room and pulled out the top drawer of the old-fashioned marble-topped bureau.
A few shirts, a pile of carefully mended underwear and some socks, rolled and turned together in two’s, met their gaze.
“That’s Jed’s drawer. Let’s see what’s in the next one.”
The second drawer revealed a freshly-ironed white waist carefully folded above a meager pile of woman’s underwear. Without a word, Mrs. Prentis pushed it shut.
The third drawer proved to be the one they wanted. Small piles of carefully made baby clothing of cheap material, but workmanship of infinite pains, met their view.
Mrs. Collins wiped the tears from her cheeks with the corner of her apron.
“See—they’re nearly ever’one made by hand and all white. Most of ’em jes’ flour sacks, but look how Mamie’s bleached ’em. An’ see this drawn-work.”