Part 5 (2/2)

She always wore very black dresses and a little gold cross, which one of the Big Girls told us was left to her by her mother, who was an Episcopalian. Miss Miriam got up all the entertainments, and it was she who made out the list of the people who were to take part in them. Three or four Sundays before an entertainment was to be given, Miss Miriam would come from the Big Room to our Primary Department with a lot of little white slips in her hand and a pad and pencil. While we were having the closing exercises, she would walk very quietly from cla.s.s to cla.s.s distributing the little white slips. The slips said, 'Please meet me after Sunday school in the Ladies' Parlor.' If you were given a slip, it meant you were chosen to take part.

Once I confided my longing to my mother.

'What makes you want to so much, Martha? You're not a forward little girl, I hope.'

Forwardness in my elders' opinion was the Eighth Deadly Sin, to be abhorred by all little girls, especially those who had heard it said that they had a mind. Little girls who had heard that might so easily, from sheer pride of intellect, become 'forward.'

'I'm not forward,' I a.s.sured her. 'I--I, oh, mother, it's so nice to be in things.'

And now at last I was in things. I could still feel the touch of the white slip which had been put into my hand only that afternoon; and I turned over in my bed on my other side and prayed with even more fervor.

'O Lord, please help my mother to get me a new dress.'

He did. A week later my mother went to town. She brought back white Persian lawn, the softest, sheerest stuff I had ever felt. I could see the pink of my skin through it when I laid it over my hand.

'I'm going to have a new dress for the entertainment,' I told Luella on my way to rehearsal. 'Are you?'

'Why, of course. I always do. Mine's going to have five rows of lace insertion in the skirt and tiny tucks too.'

'Mine's to have tucks, but it won't have but one row of lace in the skirt. Mother says little girls' dresses don't need much lace.'

'I like lots of lace,' said Luella; but her tone of finality did not disturb my happiness. I was disturbed only when, at another rehearsal, Luella told me that her mother was making a blue-silk slip to wear under her white dress. Almost everyone wore slips when they spoke pieces.

I gave my mother this information.

'Isn't the white dress pretty enough, Martha?'

I fingered the soft material she was sewing. 'It's beautiful,' I said, hiding my face in her neck. Then I whispered, 'I don't mind if Luella has a slip, mother.'

I did mind, but I knew I oughtn't.

My mother raised my head and adjusted the bow on one of my skimpy little pigtails. She looked as she did sometimes after my Aunt Emma had just gone.

'We'll see if you can have a slip. What color would you like--supposing you can?'

'Pink,' I answered promptly, 'like my best hair-ribbons.'

Pink china silk was bought. When I tried it under the Persian lawn it matched the ribbons exactly. I jiggled up and down on my toes--my only way of expressing great joy.

The dress, when my mother was not working on it, lay in the spare room on the bed. I made countless pilgrimages to the spare room. Once I slipped the dress on by myself. I wanted to see how I looked. But the mirror of the spare-room bureau was very small; so I inserted a hair-brush. With the mirror tipped I could see quite all of me--only I didn't see quite all. I didn't see my freckles, or my jaw, or my very thin legs. I saw a glory of pink and white, and I grinned from sheer rapture.

The spare room had no heat: there was a register, but unless we had company the register was closed. My mother found me one day kneeling by the bed, s.h.i.+vering, but in ecstatic contemplation of my dress, which I had not dared to try on a second time. She gave me ginger tea. I gulped it down meekly. I felt even then that as a punishment ginger tea is exquisitely relevant. It chastens the soul but at the same time it warms the stomach you've allowed to get cold.

I had been very much afraid that before the night of the entertainment,--it was to be given the twenty-third of December,--something would surely happen to my dress or to me; but the night arrived and both were in a perfect state of preservation. To expedite matters, as the Sunday school was to a.s.semble at a quarter past seven, my mother dressed me before supper. Just as the last b.u.t.ton was fastened, we heard footsteps on the front porch.

'There, Martha! Go show your father.'

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