"I got m' feet wet," she said querulously. "M' feet are wet. Lyddy's gone to Mis' Sykes's. I comeback to stay a spell till it dries off some—"
"Grandma!" Calliope cried, hurrying to her, "I didn't hear you come in. I never heard you. Come out by the kitchen fire and set your feet in the oven."
Calliope had tossed the silk on the table and had run to the old woman with outstretched hand; but the outstretched hand Grandma Hawley did not see. She stood still, looking by Calliope with a manner rather than an expression of questioning.
"What is't?" she asked, nodding direction.
Calliope understood, and she slightly lifted her brows and her thin shoulders, and seemed to glance at me.
"It's some pink for a dress, gramma," she said.
Grandma Hawley came a little nearer, and stood, a neat, bent figure in rusty black, looking, down at the sumptuous, shining lengths. Then she laid her brown, veined hand upon the silk—and I remember now her fingers, being pricked and roughened by her constant needle, caught and rubbed on the soft stuff.
"My soul," she said, "it's pink silk."
She lifted her face to Calliope, the perpetual trembling of her head making her voice come tremulously.
"That's what Abe Hawley was always talkin' when I married him," she said. "'A pink silk dress fer ye, Minnie. A fine pink silk to set ye off,' s' 'e over an' over. I thought I was a-goin' to hev it. I hed the style all picked out in my head. I know I use' to lay awake nights an' cut it out. But, time the cookin' things was paid for, the first baby come—an' then the other three to do for. An' Abe he didn't say pink silk after the fourth. But I use' to cut it out in the night, fer all that. I dunno but I cut it out yet, when I can't get to sleep an' my head feels bad. My head ain't right. It bothers me some, hummin' and ringin'. Las' night m' head—"