But it had been a life so filled with the largeness
of generous deeds that its returns had brought her the love and
reverence of every living soul she knew.
While she sat and talked to me of her journey I had time to enjoy again
the quaintness of her dress,--the quaintness of forty years before.
There was the same old-fashioned, soft gray silk with up-and-down
stripes spotted with sprigs of flowers, the lace cap with its frill
of narrow pink ribbons and two wide pink strings that fell over the
shoulders, and the handkerchief of India mull folded across the breast
and fastened with an amethyst pin. Her little bits of feet--they were
literally so--were incased in white stockings and heelless morocco
slippers bound with braid.
But her dress was never sombre. She always seemed to remember, even
in her bright ribbons and silks, the days of her girlhood, when half
the young men in the county were wild about her. When she moved she
wafted towards you a perfume of sweet lavender--the very smell that
you remember came from your own mother's old-fashioned bureau drawer
when she let you stand on tiptoe to see her pretty things.
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