I
"Perhaps I'm too old to be wearing such things, but I love bright
colors, and there's not a bit of use denying it."
Mary Ann gathered one end of the fancy tartan into a handful, and
looked approvingly at its soft, heavy folds.
"Particularly at this time of year. It's warming to the blood on a
cold autumn day just to see a dress like this on the street. I
always did like a good rich tartan. It becomes me, too. Look,
Selina'n'Jane."
She held the dress material against one cheek, and her sisters
looked--but somehow failed to see what a pleasing picture she made.
She had just come in from shopping and had not yet removed her hat,
and its trimming of foliage repeated the colors of her face--autumnal
tints of red and bronze and healthy yellow. She, the eldest of the
family and the only unmarried one, was forty-five, but she was rosy
and fat and matronly, while her sisters were pinched and anemic. They
were old maids by nature, she by chance.
"It becomes you well enough, but under the circumstances," Jane said,
exchanging glances with Selina, "it seems a pity to buy all these
things."
Mary Ann opened her eyes wide.
"Circumstances? What circumstances? It's no more than I buy every
fall," protested the puzzled Mary Ann. "The flowered piece is for a
morning wrapper, the tartan's for a street suit, and the blue-gray's a
company dress."
Jane and Selina again exchanged glances, and Selina nodded.
"You never did seem to look ahead, Mary Ann," said Jane, thus
encouraged. "I don't believe you realize that an attack of bronchitis
is serious at Ma's age. I wouldn't have got _all_ my clothes colored.
It's never any harm to have _one_ black dress."
Mary Ann gasped.
"Good gracious!" was all she said.
"Well, Mary Ann," said Selina, coming to Jane's rescue, "there's not a
particle of use shutting your eyes to plain facts. Ma's in a serious
condition, and if anything happens to her, what'll you do with all
that stuff? You may dye the blue, but that tartan won't take a good
black."
"Why," Mary Ann said, recovering speech, "Ma has bronchitis at the
beginning of cold weather every year. She'll be downstairs in a week
or two, the same as she always is."
"I hope so, Mary Ann. I hope, when next she comes down, it won't be
feet first. But we're told to prepare for the worst while we hope for
the best," said Jane solemnly, imagining that she was quoting
scripture. "You and Ma act as if there was nothing to prepare for. To
see you, sitting by her sick-bed, reading trashy love-stories out of
the magazines, and both of you as much interested!--it gives me a
creepy feeling."
"When my poor husband lay in his last illness," sighed Selina, "he was
only too willing to be flattered into the belief that he was going to
get well, but I wouldn't let him deceive himself, and it's a comfort
to me now I didn't. I had everything ready but my crape when he died.
I didn't have to depend on the neighbors for a dress for the funeral,
as I've known some do."
"Many a time I've lent, but never borrowed," Jane boasted.
"And of course, never laying off widow's weeds, I'm ready for whatever
comes." Selina stroked her tarletan cuffs complacently, yet modestly
withal, as if not wishing to make others feel too keenly the
difference in their position.
[Illustration: "JANE AND SELINA ... LOOKED AT PATIENT AND NURSE WITH
DISAPPROVING GLOOM"]
Mary Ann gathered the dress goods together and threw them in a heap on
the sofa. "There, I'm sorry I showed them to you," she cried; "you've
got me almost turned against them. I declare, I'd be melancholy in
two minutes more. Now you listen to me, Selina'n'Jane. There's no need
to worry about Ma's preparations for the next world; she's not
thinking of leaving this world yet, and there's no reason why she
should. The day you two go away, she'll be standing at the gate to say
good-by to you, just the same as she always is. You see if she's not,
Selina'n'Jane."
She left the room with something as like a flounce as her figure would
permit. Stealing softly into the half-darkened bedroom at the head of
the stairs, she stood looking down at the sleeping woman in the bed.
The indignant moisture in her eyes turned to a mist of tenderness that
blotted out the sight until a few drops formed and fell.
She was too unsuspicious to observe an unsleeplike flickering of the
eyelids. She turned to tiptoe out of the room again. There was a quick
peep, a look of relief, a husky whisper, "Is that you, Mary Ann?"
"Well now, I never did see anything like the regular way you wake up
at medicine time," Mary Ann said, opening the shutters and consulting
her watch. "Anybody'd think you had an alarm inside of you to go off
at the right time."
She administered the dose and then went on with a cheerful monologue.
She had got into this habit in the sick-room, because her mother hated
silence and had to save her own voice.
"What kept me so long was that everybody I met wanted to stop me and
ask how you were. Everybody seemed pleased to hear you were getting
along so nicely. Mrs. Dowling said Dr. Corbett told her you were the
most satisfactory patient he had, because you always did everything he
told you and always got well."
The sick woman smiled up at her. She had a smile that came and went
easily, and Mary Ann had become skilful in the art of conducting a
conversation in such a way that it served as well as words.
"And Caroline Sibbet said to tell you she was counting on going with
us to the reception to the minister, and she didn't believe she'd go
at all unless you were well by then."
It was a wistful smile now.
"So I told her she needn't be afraid, you'd be there."