The Fore-Room Rug

The Fore-Room Rug

Diadema, wife of Jot Bascom, was sitting at the window
of the village watch-tower, so called because it commanded
a view of nearly everything that happened in Pleasant River;
those details escaping the physical eye being supplied by faith
and imagination working in the light of past experience.
She sat in the chair of honor, the chair of choice, the high-backed
rocker by the southern window, in which her husband's mother,
old Mrs. Bascom, had sat for thirty years, applying a still more
powerful intellectual telescope to the doings of her neighbors.
Diadema's seat had formerly been on the less desirable side of
the little light-stand, where Priscilla Hollis was now installed.

Mrs. Bascom was at work on a new fore-room rug, the former one having
been transferred to Miss Hollis's chamber; for, as the teacher at the brick
schoolhouse, a graduate of a Massachusetts normal school, and the daughter
of a deceased judge, she was a boarder of considerable consequence.
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and the two women were alone.
It was a pleasant, peaceful sitting-room, as neat as wax in every part.
The floor was covered by a cheerful patriotic rag carpet woven entirely
of red, white, and blue rags, and protected in various exposed localities
by button rugs,--red, white, and blue disks superimposed one on the other.

Diadema Bascom was a person of some sentiment. When her old father,
Captain Dennett, was dying, he drew a wallet from under his pillow,
and handed her a twenty-dollar bill to get something to remember him by.
This unwonted occurrence burned itself into the daughter's imagination,
and when she came as a bride to the Bascom house she refurnished
the sitting-room as a kind of monument to the departed soldier,
whose sword and musket were now tied to the wall with neatly hemmed bows
of bright red cotton.

The chair cushions were of red-and-white glazed patch,
the turkey wings that served as hearth brushes were hung against
the white-painted chimney-piece with blue skirt braid, and the white
shades were finished with home-made scarlet "tossels."
A little whatnot in one corner was laden with the trophies of battle.
The warrior's brass buttons were strung on a red picture cord and hung
over his daguerreotype on the upper shelf; there was a tarnished
shoulder strap, and a flattened bullet that the captain's jealous
contemporaries swore _he_ never stopped, unless he got it in the rear
when he was flying from the foe. There was also a little tin
canister in which a charge of powder had been sacredly preserved.
The scoffers, again, said that "the cap'n put it in his musket
when he went into the war, and kep' it there till he come out."
These objects were tastefully decorated with the national colors.
In fact, no modern aesthete could have arranged a symbolic symphony
of grief and glory with any more fidelity to an ideal than Diadema Bascom,
in working out her scheme of red, white, and blue.

Rows of ripening tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows,
and a tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills.
The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis
never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group
of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house,
and the jolly moon again, creeping one after another across the open
space at the top.

Jot Bascom was out, as usual, gathering statistics of
the last horse trade; little Jot was building "stickin'" houses
in the barn; Priscilla was sewing long strips for braiding;
while Diadema sat at the drawing-in frame, hook in hand,
and a large basket of cut rags by her side.

Not many weeks before she had paid one of her periodical
visits to the attic. No housekeeper in Pleasant River save
Mrs. Jonathan Bascom would have thought of dusting a garret,
washing the window and sweeping down the cobwebs once a month,
and renewing the camphor bags in the chests twice a year;
but notwithstanding this zealous care the moths had made their
way into one of her treasure-houses, the most precious of all,--
the old hair trunk that had belonged to her sister Lovice.
Once ensconced there, they had eaten through its hoarded relics,
and reduced the faded finery to a state best described by Diadema
as "reg'lar riddlin' sieves." She had brought the tattered
pile down in to the kitchen, and had spent a tearful afternoon
in cutting the good pieces from the perforated garments.
Three heaped-up baskets and a full dish-pan were the result;
and as she had snipped and cut and sorted, one of her sentimental
projects had entered her mind and taken complete possession there.

"I declare," she said, as she drew her hooking-needle
in and out, "I wouldn't set in the room with some folks and work
on these pieces; for every time I draw in a scrap of cloth
Lovice comes up to me for all the world as if she was settin'
on the sofy there. I ain't told you my plan, Miss Hollis,
and there ain't many I shall tell; but this rug is going to be
a kind of a hist'ry of my life and Lovey's wrought in together,
just as we was bound up in one another when she was alive.
Her things and mine was laid in one trunk, and the moths sha'n't
cheat me out of 'em altogether. If I can't look at 'em wet Sundays,
and shake 'em out, and have a good cry over 'em, I'll make 'em
up into a kind of dumb show that will mean something to me,
if it don't to anybody else.

"We was the youngest of thirteen, Lovey and I,
and we was twins. There 's never been more 'n half o'
me left sence she died. We was born together, played and
went to school together, got engaged and married together,
and we all but died together, yet we wa'n't a mite alike.
There was an old lady come to our house once that used to say,
'There's sister Nabby, now: she 'n' I ain't no more alike
'n if we wa'n't two; she 's jest as diff'rent as I am t'
other way.' Well, I know what I want to put into my rag story,
Miss Hollis, but I don't hardly know how to begin."

Priscilla dropped her needle, and bent over the frame with interest.

"A spray of two roses in the centre,--there 's the beginning;
why, don't you see, dear Mrs. Bascom?"

"Course I do," said Diadema, diving to the bottom of
the dish-pan. "I've got my start now, and don't you say a word
for a minute. The two roses grow out of one stalk; they'll be
Lovey and me, though I'm consid'able more like a potato blossom.
The stalk 's got to be green, and here is the very green silk mother
walked bride in, and Lovey and I had roundabouts of it afterwards.
She had the chicken-pox when we was about four years old,
and one of the first things I can remember is climbing up and
looking over mother's footboard at Lovey, all speckled.
Mother had let her slip on her new green roundabout
over her nightgown, just to pacify her, and there she set
playing with the kitten Reuben Granger had brought her.
He was only ten years old then, but he 'd begun courting Lovice.

"The Grangers' farm joined ours. They had eleven children,
and mother and father had thirteen, and we was always playing together.
Mother used to tell a funny story about that. We were all little young
ones and looked pretty much alike, so she didn't take much notice
of us in the daytime when we was running out 'n' in; but at night when
the turn-up bedstead in the kitchen was taken down and the trundle-beds
were full, she used to count us over, to see if we were all there.
One night, when she 'd counted thirteen and set down to her sewing,
father come in and asked if Moses was all right, for one of the neighbors
had seen him playing side of the river about supper-time. Mother knew she
'd counted us straight, but she went round with a candle to make sure.
Now, Mr. Granger had a head as red as a shumac bush; and when she
carried the candle close to the beds to take another tally,
there was thirteen children, sure enough, but if there wa'n't a
red-headed Granger right in amongst our boys in the turn-up bedstead!
While father set out on a hunt for our Moses, mother yanked the sleepy
little red-headed Granger out o' the middle and took him home, and father
found Moses asleep on a pile of shavings under the joiner's bench.

"They don't have such families nowadays. One time when measles
went all over the village, they never came to us, and Jabe Slocum said
there wa'n't enough measles to go through the Dennett family, so they
didn't start in on 'em. There, I ain't going to finish the stalk;
I'm going to draw in a little here and there all over the rug,
while I'm in the sperit of plannin' it, and then it will be plain
work of matching colors and filling out.

"You see the stalk is mother's dress, and the outside green
of the moss roses is the same goods, only it 's our roundabouts.
I meant to make 'em red, when I marked the pattern,
and then fill out round 'em with a light color; but now I
ain't satisfied with anything but white, for nothing will do
in the middle of the rug but our white wedding dresses.
I shall have to fill in dark, then, or mixed. Well, that won't
be out of the way, if it 's going to be a true rag story;
for Lovey's life went out altogether, and mine hasn't been
any too gay.

"I'll begin on Lovey's rose first. She was the prettiest and
the liveliest girl in the village, and she had more beaux than you
could shake a stick at. I generally had to take what she left over.
Reuben Granger was crazy about her from the time she was knee-high;
but when he went away to Bangor to study for the ministry,
the others had it all their own way. She was only seventeen;
she hadn't ever experienced religion, and she was mischeevous
as a kitten.

"You remember you laughed, this morning, when Mr. Bascom told
about Hogshead Jowett? Well, he used to want to keep company
with Lovey; but she couldn't abide him, and whenever he come to court
her she clim' into a hogshead, and hid till after he 'd gone.
The boys found it out, and used to call him 'Hogshead Jowett."
He was the biggest fool in Foxboro' Four Corners; and that 's
saying consid'able, for Foxboro' is famous for its fools,
and always has been. There was thirteen of 'em there one year.
They say a man come out from Portland, and when he got as fur
as Foxboro' he kep' inquiring the way to Dunstan; and I declare
if he didn't meet them thirteen fools, one after another,
standing in their front dooryards ready to answer questions.
When he got to Dunstan, says he, 'For the Lord's sake,
what kind of a village is that I've just went through?
Be they _all_ fools there?'

"Hogshead was scairt to death whenever he come to see Lovice.
One night, when he 'd been there once, and she 'd hid, as she
always done, he come back a second time, and she went to the door,
not mistrusting it was him. 'Did you forget anything?'
says she, sparkling out at him through a little crack.
He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered out,
'Yes, I forgot my han'k'chief; but it don't make no odds,
for I didn't pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago,
and I don't make no use of it 'ceptins to wipe my nose on.'
How we did laugh over that! Well, he had a conviction of sin
pretty soon afterwards, and p'r'aps it helped his head some;
at any rate he quit farming, and become a Bullockite preacher.

"It seems odd, when Lovice wa'n't a perfessor herself,
she should have drawed the most pious young men in the village,
but she did: she had good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists,
Millerites and Adventists, all on her string together;
she even had one Cochranite, though the sect had mostly died out.
But when Reuben Granger come home, a full-feathered-out minister,
he seemed to strike her fancy as he never had before, though they
were always good friends from children. He had light hair
and blue eyes and fair skin (his business being under cover kep'
him bleached out), and he and Lovey made the prettiest couple
you ever see; for she was dark complected, and her cheeks no
otherways than scarlit the whole durin' time. She had a change
of heart that winter; in fact she had two of 'em, for she
changed hers for Reuben's, and found a hope at the same time.
'T was a good honest conversion, too, though she did say to me
she was afraid that if Reuben hadn't taught her what love
was or might be, she 'd never have found out enough about it
to love God as she 'd ought to.

"There, I've begun both roses, and hers is 'bout finished.
I sha'n't have more 'n enough white alapaca. It's lucky
the moths spared one breadth of the wedding dresses;
we was married on the same day, you know, and dressed just alike.
Jot wa'n't quite ready to be married, for he wa'n't any
more forehanded 'bout that than he was 'bout other things;
but I told him Lovey and I had kept up with each other from
the start, and he 'd got to fall into line or drop out o'
the percession.--Now what next?"

"Wasn't there anybody at the wedding but you and Lovice?"
asked Priscilla, with an amused smile.

"Land, yes! The meeting-house was cram jam full. Oh, to be sure!
I know what you 're driving at! Well, I have to laugh to think
I should have forgot the husbands! They'll have to be worked
into the story, certain; but it'll be consid'able of a chore,
for I can't make flowers out of coat and pants stuff, and there
ain't any more flowers on this branch anyway."

Diadema sat for a few minutes in rapt thought,
and then made a sudden inspired dash upstairs, where Miss
Hollis presently heard her rummaging in an old chest.
She soon came down, triumphant.

"Wa'n't it a providence I saved Jot's and Reuben's wedding ties!
And here they are,--one yellow and green mixed, and one brown.
Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to draw in a butterfly
hovering over them two roses, and make it out of the neckties,--
green with brown spots. That'll bring in the husbands; and land!
I wouldn't have either of 'em know it for the world. I'll take
a pattern of that lunar moth you pinned on the curtain yesterday."

Miss Hollis smiled in spite of herself. "You have some
very ingenious ideas and some very pretty thoughts, Mrs. Bascom,
do you know it?"

"It's the first time I ever heard tell of it,"
said Diadema cheerfully. "Lovey was the pretty-spoken,
pretty-appearing one; I was always plain and practical. While I think
of it, I'll draw in a little mite of this red into my carnation pink.
It was a red scarf Reuben brought Lovey from Portland.
It was the first thing he ever give her, and aunt Hitty said
if one of the Abel Grangers give away anything that cost money,
it meant business. That was all fol-de-rol, for there never
was a more liberal husband, though he was a poor minister;
but then they always _are_ poor, without they're rich;
there don't seem to be any halfway in ministers.

"We was both lucky that way. There ain't a stingy bone in Jot
Bascom's body. He don't make much money, but what he does make goes
into the bureau drawer, and the one that needs it most takes it out.
He never asks me what I done with the last five cents he give me.
You 've never been married Miss Hollis, and you ain't engaged,
so you don't know much about it; but I tell you there 's a heap o'
foolishness talked about husbands. If you get the one you like yourself,
I don't know as it matters if all the other women folks in town don't
happen to like him as well as you do; they ain't called on to do that.
They see the face he turns to them, not the one he turns to you.
Jot ain't a very good provider, nor he ain't a man that 's much
use round a farm, but he 's such a fav'rite I can't blame him.
There 's one thing: when he does come home he 's got something to say,
and he 's always as lively as a cricket, and smiling as a basket of chips.
I like a man that 's good comp'ny, even if he ain't so forehanded.
There ain't anything specially lovable about forehandedness, when you
come to that. I shouldn't ever feel drawed to a man because
he was on time with his work. He 's got such pleasant ways, Jot has!
The other afternoon he didn't get home early enough to milk;
and after I done the two cows, I split the kindling and brought
in the wood, for I knew he 'd want to go to the tavern and tell
the boys 'bout the robbery up to Boylston. There ain't anybody
but Jot in this village that has wit enough to find out what 's
going on, and tell it in an int'resting way round the tavern fire.
And he can do it without being full of cider, too; he don't need
any apple juice to limber _his_ tongue!

"Well, when he come in, he see the pails of milk,
and the full wood-box, and the supper laid out under the screen
cloth on the kitchen table, and he come up to me at the sink,
and says he, 'Diademy, you 're the best wife in this county,
and the brightest jewel in my crown,--that 's what _you_ are!'
(He got that idea out of a duet he sings with Almiry Berry.)
Now I'd like to know whether that ain't pleasanter than 't
is to have a man do all the shed 'n' barn work up smart,
and then set round the stove looking as doleful as a last
year's bird's nest? Take my advice, Miss Hollis:
get a good provider if you can, but anyhow try to find you
a husband that'll keep on courting a little now and then,
when he ain't too busy; it smooths things consid'able
round the house.

"There, I got so int'rested in what I was saying, I've went
on and finished the carnation, and some of the stem, too.
Now what comes next? Why, the thing that happened next,
of course, and that was little Jot.

"I'll work in a bud on my rose and one on Lovey's,
and my bud'll be made of Jot's first trousers. The goods
ain't very appropriate for a rosebud, but it'll have to do,
for the idee is the most important thing in this rug.
When I put him into pants, I hadn't any cloth in the house,
and it was such bad going Jot couldn't get to Wareham to buy
me anything; so I made 'em out of an old gray cashmere skirt,
and lined 'em with flannel."

"Buds are generally the same color as the roses,
aren't they?" ventured Priscilla.

"I don't care if they be," said Diadema obstinately.
"What's to hender this bud's bein' grafted on? Mrs. Granger
was as black as an Injun, but the little Granger children
were all red-headed, for they took after their father.
But I don't know; you've kind o' got me out o' conceit with it.
I s'pose I could have taken a piece of his baby blanket;
but the moths never et a mite o' that, and it's too good to cut up.
There's one thing I can do: I can make the bud up with a long stem,
and have it growing right up alongside of mine,--would you?"

"No, it must be stalk of your stalk, bone of your bone,
flesh of your flesh, so to speak. I agree with you, the idea
is the first thing. Besides, the gray is a very light shade,
and I dare say it will look like a bluish white."

"I'll try it and see, but I wish to the land the moths
_had_ eat the pinning-blanket, and then I could have used it.
Lovey worked the scallops on the aidge for me.
My grief! what int'rest she took in my baby clothes!
Little Jot was born at Thanksgiving time, and she come over
from Skowhegan, where Reuben was settled pastor of his first church.
I shall never forget them two weeks to the last day of my life.
There was deep snow on the ground. I had that chamber there,
with the door opening into the setting-room. Mother and father
Bascom kep' out in the dining-room and kitchen, where the work
was going on, and Lovey and the baby and me had the front
part of the house to ourselves, with Jot coming in on tiptoe,
heaping up wood in the fireplace so 't he 'most roasted us out.
He don't forget his chores in time o' sickness.

"I never took so much comfort in all my days.
Jot got one of the Billings girls to come over and help
in the housework, so 't I could lay easy 's long as I
wanted to; and I never had such a rest before nor since.
There ain't any heaven in the book o' Revelations that 's any
better than them two weeks was. I used to lay quiet in my good
feather bed, fingering the pattern of my best crochet quilt,
and looking at the fire-light shining on Lovey and the baby.
She 'd hardly leave him in the cradle a minute. When I did
n't want him in bed with me, she 'd have him in her lap.
Babies are common enough to most folks, but Lovey was diff'rent.
She 'd never had any experience with children, either, for we
was the youngest in our family; and it wa'n't long before we
come near being the oldest, too, for mother buried
seven of us before she went herself. Anyway, I never saw
nobody else look as she done when she held my baby.
I don't mean nothing blasphemious when I say 't was for all
the world like your photograph of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

"The nights come in early, so it was 'most dark
at four o'clock. The little chamber was so peaceful!
I could hear Jot rattling the milk-pails, but I'd draw a deep
breath o' comfort, for I knew the milk would be strained
and set away without my stepping foot to the floor.
Lovey used to set by the fire, with a tall candle on the light-stand
behind her, and a little white knit cape over her shoulders.
She had the pinkest cheeks, and the longest eyelashes, and a mouth
like a little red buttonhole; and when she bent over the baby,
and sung to him,--though his ears wa'n't open, I guess for his
eyes wa'n't,--the tears o' joy used to rain down my cheeks.
It was pennyrial hymns she used to sing mostly, and the one I
remember best was

"'Daniel's wisdom may I know,
Stephen's faith and spirit show;
John's divine communion feel,
Moses' meekness, Joshua's zeal,
Run like the unwearied Paul,
Win the day and conquer all.

"'Mary's love may I possess,
Lydia's tender-heartedness,
Peter's fervent spirit feel,
James's faith by works reveal,
Like young Timothy may I
Every sinful passion fly.'

"'Oh Diademy,' she 'd say, 'you was always the best,
and it 's nothing more 'n right the baby should have come to you.
P'r'aps God will think I'm good enough some time; and if he does,
Diademy, I'll offer up a sacrifice every morning and every evening.
But I'm afraid,' says she, 'he thinks I can't stand any more happiness,
and be a faithful follower of the cross. The Bible says we 've
got to wade through fiery floods before we can enter the kingdom.
I don't hardly know how Reuben and I are going to find any way
to wade through; we're both so happy, they 'd have to be consid'able
hot before we took notice,' says she, with the dimples all breaking
out in her cheeks.

"And that was true as gospel. She thought everything Reuben done
was just right, and he thought everything she done was just right.
There wa'n't nobody else; the world was all Reuben 'n' all Lovey to them.
If you could have seen her when she was looking for him to come
from Skowhegan! She used to watch at the attic window; and when she
seen him at the foot of the hill she 'd up like a squirrel, and run down
the road without stopping for anything but to throw a shawl over her head.
And Reuben would ketch her up as if she was a child, and scold her for
not putting a hat on, and take her under his coat coming up the hill.
They was a sight for the neighbors, I must confess, but it wa'n't one you
could hardly disapprove of, neither. Aunt Hitty said it was tempting
Providence and couldn't last, and God would visit his wrath on 'em
for making idols of sinful human flesh.

"She was right one way,--it didn't last; but nobody
can tell me God was punishing of 'em for being too happy.
I guess he 'ain't got no objection to folks being happy here below,
if they don't forget it ain't the whole story.

"Well, I must mark in a bud on Lovey's stalk now,
and I'm going to make it of her baby's long white cloak.
I earned the money for it myself, making coats, and put four
yards of the finest cashmere into it; for three years after
little Jot was born I went over to Skowhegan to help
Lovey through her time o' trial. Time o' trial! I thought I
was happy, but I didn't know how to be as happy as Lovey did;
I wa'n't made on that pattern.

"When I first showed her the baby (it was a boy,
same as mine), her eyes shone like two evening stars.
She held up her weak arms, and gathered the little bundle o'
warm flannen into 'em; and when she got it close she shut
her eyes and moved her lips, and I knew she was taking
her lamb to the altar and offering it up as a sacrifice.
Then Reuben come in. I seen him give one look at the two
dark heads laying close together on the white piller,
and then go down on his knees by the side of the bed.
'T wa'n't no place for me; I went off, and left 'em together.
We didn't mistrust it then, but they only had three days
more of happiness, and I'm glad I give 'em every minute."

The room grew dusky as twilight stole gently over
the hills of Pleasant River. Priscilla's lip trembled;
Diadema's tears fell thick and fast on the white rosebud,
and she had to keep wiping her eyes as she followed the pattern.

"I ain't said as much as this about it for five years," she went on,
with a tell-tale quiver in her voice, "but now I've got going I can't stop.
I'll have to get the weight out o' my heart somehow.

"Three days after I put Lovey's baby into her arms the Lord
called her home. 'When I prayed so hard for this little
new life, Reuben,' says she holding the baby as if she could never let
it go, 'I didn't think I'd got to give up my own in place of it;
but it's the first fiery flood we've had, dear, and though it burns
to my feet I'll tread it as brave as I know how.'

"She didn't speak a word after that; she just faded
away like a snowdrop, hour by hour. And Reuben and I stared
at one another in the face as if we was dead instead of her,
and we went about that house o' mourning like sleep-walkers
for days and says, not knowing whether we et or slept,
or what we done.

"As for the baby, the poor little mite didn't live
many hours after its mother, and we buried 'em together.
Reuben and I knew what Lovey would have liked. She gave her life
for the baby's, and it was a useless sacrifice, after all.
No, it wa'n't neither; it _could_n't have been!
You needn't tell me God'll let such sacrifices as that come
out useless! But anyhow, we had one coffin for 'em both,
and I opened Lovey's arms and laid the baby in 'em.
When Reuben and I took our last look, we thought she
seemed more 'n ever like Mary, the mother of Jesus.
There never was another like her, and there never will be.
'Nonesuch,' Reuben used to call her."

There was silence in the room, broken only by the ticking
of the old clock and the tinkle of a distant cowbell.
Priscilla made an impetuous movement, flung herself down by the
basket of rags, and buried her head in Diadema's gingham apron.

"Dear Mrs. Bascom, don't cry. I'm sorry, as the children say."

"No, I won't more 'n a minute. Jot can't stand it to see
me give way. You go and touch a match to the kitchen fire,
so 't the kettle will be boiling, and I'll have a minute to myself.
I don't know what the neighbors would think to ketch me crying over my
drawing-in frame; but the spell's over now, or 'bout over, and when I
can muster up courage I'll take the rest of the baby's cloak and put
a border of white everlastings round the outside of the rug.
I'll always mean the baby's birth and Lovey's death to me;
but the flowers will remind me it 's life everlasting for both
of 'em, and so it's the most comforting end I can think of."

It was indeed a beautiful rug when it was finished and laid
in front of the sofa in the fore-room. Diadema was very choice of it.
When company was expected she removed it from its accustomed place,
and spread it in a corner of the room where no profane foot could possibly
tread on it. Unexpected callers were managed by a different method.
If they seated themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not "set easy"
or "rest comfortable" there, and suggest their moving to the stuffed
chair by the window. The neighbors thought this solicitude merely
another sign of Diadema's "p'ison neatness," excusable in this case
as there was so much white in the new rug.

The fore-room blinds were ordinarily closed, and the chillness
of death pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions,
when the sun was allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes
of glass in each window, and a blaze was lighted in the fire-place,
Miss Hollis would look in as she went upstairs, and muse
a moment over the pathetic little romance of rags, the story
of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies,
whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads.
Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that
all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage,
motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death,
were chronicled in this narrow space not two yards square.

Diadema came in behind the little school-teacher one afternoon.

"I cal'late," she said, "that being kep' in a dark room, and never
being tread on, it will last longer 'n I do. If it does, Priscilla,
you know that white crepe shawl of mine I wear to meeting hot Sundays:
that would make a second row of everlastings round the border.
You could piece out the linings good and smooth on the under side,
draw in the white flowers, and fill 'em round with black to set 'em off.
The rug would be han'somer than ever then, and the story--
would be finished."

-THE END-
Kate Douglas Wiggin's short story: The Fore-Room Rug

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