"I always liked to wear that dress," she says. "I had—there were folks that liked it."
"Put it on to-night," I says, "and take charge of this room for us."
But she kind of shrunk back, and shook her head.
And I thought, like lightning, "It was the Picture Man that was on the bureau that liked to see you in that dress—or I miss my guess."
But I never said a word, and went on putting a dress-form together.
The room looked real pretty when we got all the things up. There were fourteen dresses in all, around the room. In the very middle was Mis' Toplady's wedding-dress—white silk, made real full, with the white raspberry buttons.
"For twenty years," she said, "it's been in the bottom drawer of the spare room. It's nice to see it wore."
And we all thought it was so nice that we borrowed the wax figure from the White House Emporium, and put the dress on. It looked real funny, though, to see that smirking, red-cheeked figure with lots of light hair and its head on one side, coming up out of Mis' Toplady's wedding-dress.
Us ladies were all ready and on hand early that night, dressed in our black alpacas and wearing white aprons, most of us; and Miss Mayhew had on a little white dimity, and she insisted on helping in the kitchen—we were going to give them only lemonade and sandwiches, for we were expecting the whole town, and the admission was only fifteen cents apiece.
Then—I remember it was just after the clock struck seven—my telephone rang. And it was a man's voice—which is exciting in itself, no man ever calling me up without it's the grocery-man to try to get rid of some of his fruit that's going to spoil, or the flour and feed man to say he can't send up the corn-meal till to-morrow, after all. And this Voice wasn't like either one of them.