Some of the
dresses were neat, though terribly worn and faded, but all were
fortunately far too short and small for a person of her fine
proportions. Besides, her very soul shrank from wearing them, and
her spirit revolted both from the insult to herself and to the
poor dead woman she had succeeded, so she came downstairs to darn
and mend and patch again her shabby wardrobe.
Waitstill had gone through the same as her mother before her, but
in despair, when she was seventeen, she began to cut over the old
garments for herself and Patty. Mercifully there were very few of
them, and they had long since been discarded. At eighteen she had
learned to dye yarns with yellow oak or maple bark and to make
purples from elder and sumac berries; she could spin and knit as
well as any old "Aunt" of the village, and cut and shape a
garment as deftly as the Edgewood tailoress, but the task of
making bricks without straw was a hard one, indeed.
She wore a white cotton frock on this particular Sunday. It was
starched and ironed with a beautiful gloss, while a touch of
distinction was given to her costume by a little black sleeveless
"roundabout" made out of the covering of an old silk umbrella.
Her flat hat had a single wreath of coarse daisies around the
crown, and her mitts were darned in many places, nevertheless you
could not entirely spoil her; God had used a liberal hand in
making her, and her father's parsimony was a sort of boomerang
that flew back chiefly upon himself.
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