"Oh, an' I tell you the song in me just crowded the rest o' me out of existence. I felt like a psalm o' David, bein' sung. I hadn't dreamed she'd be like that—I hadn't dreamed it. Why, some folks, Christian an' in a pew, never come to the part o' their lives where they want to go back an' get a Big Lil, too.
"We stood there a little while, an' I talked to her some, though I declare I couldn't tell you what I said. You can't—when the psalm feelin' comes. But we stood out there sort o' occupyin' April, till after the big blue bowl o' feathery eggs had been popped in the big black oven, an' it was rill dark.
"I forgot all about the shroud till we stepped in the house an' lit up, an' I see it. An' then it was like the song in me gettin' words, an' it come to me what it all was: How it rilly hadn't been Jennie's funeral so much as it had been 'Leven's—the 'Leven that was. But I didn't tell her—I never told her. An' she wore that shroud for most two years, mornin's, about her work."
Calliope smiled a little, with her way of coming back to the moment from the four great horizons.
"Land," she said, "sometimes I think I'll make some shrouds an' starch 'em up rill good, an' take 'em to the City an' offer to folks. An' say: Here. Die—die. You've got to, some part o' you, before you can awake an' put on your beautiful garments an' your strength. I told you, you know," she added, "I guess sometimes I kind o' believe in craziness!"
XVIII
IN THE WILDERNESS A CEDAR
In answer to my summons Liddy Ember appeared before me one morning and outspread a Vienna book of coloured fashion-plates.
"Dressmakin' 'd be a real drudgery for me," she said, "if it wasn't for havin' the colour plates an' makin' what I can to look like 'em. Sometimes I get a collar or a cuff that seems almost like the picture. There's always somethin' in the way of a cedar," she added blithely.