XI
A JUNE SUNDAY
IT was a Sunday in June, and almost the whole population of
Riverboro and Edgewood was walking or driving in the direction of
the meeting-house on Tory Hill.
Church toilettes, you may well believe, were difficult of
attainment by Deacon Baxter's daughters, as they had been by his
respective helpmates in years gone by. When Waitstill's mother
first asked her husband to buy her a new dress, and that was two
years after marriage, he simply said: "You look well enough; what
do you want to waste money on finery for, these hard times? If
other folks are extravagant, that ain't any reason you should be.
You ain't obliged to take your neighbors for an example:--take
'em for a warnin'!"
"But, Foxwell, my Sunday dress is worn completely to threads,"
urged the second Mrs. Baxter.
"That's what women always say; they're all alike; no more idea o'
savin' anything than a skunk-blackbird! I can't spare any money
for
gew-gaws, and you might as well understand it first as last. Go
up attic and open the hair trunk by the winder; you'll find
plenty there to last you for years to come."
The second Mrs. Baxter visited the attic as commanded, and in
turning over the clothes in the old trunk, knew by instinct that
they had belonged to her predecessor in office.
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