The Art and Loan Dress Exhibit recalls a story of my early association with Calliope Marsh in Friendship Village, when yet she was not well known to me—her humanity, her habit of self-giving, her joy in life other than her own.

Afterward I knew that I had never seen a woman more keenly and constantly a participant in the lives of others. She was hardly individuated at all. She suffered and joyed with others, literally, more than she did in her "own" affairs. I now feel certain that before we can reach the individualism which we crave—and have tried to claim too soon—we must first know such participation as hers in all conscious life—in all life, conscious or unconscious.

This is that early story, as I then wrote it down:

Calliope Marsh had been having a "small company." Though nominally she was hostess to twenty of us, invited there for six o'clock supper, yet we did not see Calliope until supper was done. Mis' Postmaster Sykes had opened the door for us, had told us to "walk up-stairs to the right an' lay aside your things," and had marshaled us to the dining-room and so to chairs outlining the room. And there the daughters of most of the guests had served us while Calliope stayed in the kitchen, with Hannah Hager to help her, seasoning and stirring and "getting it onto the plates." Afterward, flushed and, I thought, lovably nervous, Calliope came in to receive our congratulations and presently to hear good-nights. But I, who should have hurried home to Madame Josephine, the modiste from town who that week called my soul her own, waited for a little to talk it over—partly, I confess, because a fine, driving rain had begun to fall.

We sat in the kitchen while Calliope ate her own belated supper on a corner of the kitchen table; and on another corner, thin, tired little Hannah Hager ate hers. And, as is our way in Friendship, Hannah talked it over, too—that little maid-of-all-work, who was nowhere attached in service, but lived in a corner of Grandma Hawley's cottage and went tirelessly about the village ministering to the needs of us all.

"Everything you hed was lovely, Miss Marsh," Hannah said with shining content and a tired sigh. "You didn't hev a single set-back, did you?"

"Well, I dunno," Calliope doubted; "it all tastes like so much chips to me, even now. I was kind o' nervous over my pressed ham, too. I noticed two o' the plates didn't eat all theirs, but the girls couldn't rec'lect whose they was. Did you notice?"

"No, sir, I didn't," Hannah confessed with a shake of the head at herself. "I did notice," she amended brightly, "that Mis' Postmaster Sykes didn't make way with all her cream, but I guess ice-cream don't agree with her. She's got a kind o' peculiar stomach."

"Well-a, anybody hev on anything new?" Calliope asked with interest. "I couldn't tell a stitch anybody hed on. I don't seem to sense things when I hev company."

There was no need for me to give evidence.

"Oh!" Hannah said, as we say when we mean a thing very much, "didn't you see Lyddy Eider?"

"Seems to me I did take it in she hed on something pink," Calliope remembered.

Little Hannah stood up in her excitement.

"Pink, Miss Marsh!" she said. "I should say it was. Pink with cloth, w'ite. The w'ite," Hannah illustrated it, "went here an' so, in points. In between was lace an' little ribbon, pink too. An' all up so was buttons. An' it all rustled w'en she stirred 'round. An' it laid smooth down, like it was starched an' ironed, an' then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft. An' every way she stood it looked nice—it didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong. It was dressmaker-made, ma'am," Hannah concluded impressively. "An' it looked like the pictures in libr'ry books. My! You'd ought 'a' seen Gramma Hawley. She fair et Lydia up with lookin' at her."

I, who was not yet acquainted with every one in Friendship, had already observed the two that day—brown, bent Grandma Hawley and the elaborately self-possessed Miss Eider, with a conspicuously high-pitched voice, who lived in the city and was occasionally a guest in the village. The girl, who I gathered had once lived in Friendship, was like a living proof that all village maids may become princesses; and the brooding tenderness of the old woman had impressed me as might a mourning dove mothering some sprightly tanager.

"Gramma Hawley brought her up from a little thing," Calliope explained to me now, "and a rich Mis' Eider, from the city, she adopted her, and Gramma let her go. I guess it near killed Gramma to do it—but she'd always been one to like nice things herself, and she couldn't get them, so she see what it'd mean to Lyddy. Lyddy's got pretty proud, she's hed so much to do with, but she comes back to see Gramma sometimes, I'll say that for her. Didn't anybody else hev on anything new?"

"No," Hannah knew positively, "they all come out in the same old togs. When the finger-bowl started I run up in the hall an' peeked down the register, so's to see 'em pass out o' the room. Comp'ny clo'es don't change much here in Friendship. Mis' Postmaster Sykes says yest'day, when we was ironin': 'Folks,' she says, 'don't dress as much here in Friendship as I wish't we did. Land knows,' Mis' Sykes says, 'I don't dress, neither. But I like to see it done.'"

Calliope, who is sixty and has a rosy, wrinkled face, looked sidewise down the long vista of the cooking-stove coals.

"Like to see it done!" she repeated. "Why, I get so raving hungry to see some colored dress-goods on somebody seem's though I'd fly. Black and brown and gray—gray and brown and black hung on to every woman in Friendship. Every one of us has our clo'es picked out so everlastin' durable."

Hannah sympathetically giggled with, "Don't they, though?"

"My grief!" Calliope exclaimed. "It reminds me, I got my mother's calicoes down to pass 'round and I never thought to take them in."

She went to her new golden oak kitchen cabinet—a birthday gift to Calliope from the Friendship church for her services at its organ—and brought us her mother's "calicoes"—a huge box of pieces left from every wool and lawn and "morning housework dress" worn by the Marshes, quick and passed, and by their friends. Calliope knew them all; and I listened idly while the procession went by us in sad-colored fabrics—"black and brown and gray—gray and brown and black."

I think that my attention may have wandered a little, for I was recalled by some slight stir made by Hannah Hager. She had risen and was bending toward Calliope, with such leaping wistfulness in her eyes that I followed her look. And I saw among the pieces, like a bright breast in sober plumage, a square of chambray in an exquisite color of rose.

"Oh—" said little Hannah softly, "hain't that just beauti-ful?"

"Like it, Hannah?" Calliope asked.

"My!" said the little maid fervently.

"It was a dress Gramma Hawley made for Lyddy Eider when she was a little girl," Calliope explained. "I dunno but what it was the last one she made for her. Pretty, ain't it? Lyddy always seemed to hanker some after pink. Gramma mostly always got her pink." Calliope glanced at Hannah, over-shoulder. "Why don't you get a pink one for then?" she asked abruptly; and, "When is it to be, Hannah?" she challenged her, teasingly, as we tease for only one cause.

On which I had pleasure in the sudden rose-pink of Hannah's face, and she sank back in her seat at the table corner in the particular, delicious anguish that comes but once.

"There, there," said Calliope soothingly, "no need to turn any more colors, 's I know of. Land, if they ain't enough sandwiches left to fry for my dinner."

When, presently, Calliope and I were in the dining-room and I was watching her "redd up" the table while Hannah clattered dishes in the kitchen, I asked her who Hannah's prince might be. Calliope told me with a manner of triumph. For was he not Henry Austin, that great, good-looking giant who helped in the post-office store, whose baritone voice was the making of the church choir and on whom many Friendship daughters would not have looked unkindly?

"I'm so glad for her," Calliope said. "She ain't hed many to love besides Gramma Hawley—and Gramma's so wrapped up in Lyddy Eider. And yet I feel bad for Hannah, too. All their lives folks here'll likely say: 'How'd he come to marry her?' It's hard to be that kind of woman. I wish't Hannah could hev a wedding that would show 'em she is somebody. I wish't she could hev a wedding dress that would show them how pretty she is—a dress all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places and little unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of having if you weren't real up in dress," Calliope explained. "A dress like Lyddy Eider always has on."

"Calliope!" I said then, laughing. "I believe you would be a regular fashion plate, if you could afford it."

"I would," she gravely admitted, "I'm afraid I would. I love nice clothes and I just worship colors." She hesitated, looking at me with a manner of shyness. "Sit still a minute, will you?" she said, "I'd like to show you something."

She went upstairs and I listened to Hannah Hager, clattering kitchen things and singing:

Pink chambray and the love of blue ribbons and Miss Lydia Eider in her dress that was "dressmaker-made." These I turned in my mind, and I found myself thinking of my visit to the town in the next week, for which Madame Josephine was preparing; and of how certain elegancies are there officially recognized instead of being merely divined by the wistful amateur in color and textile. How Calliope and Hannah would have delighted, I thought idly, in the town's way of pretty things to wear, such as Josephine could make; the way that Lydia Eider knew, in her frocks that were "dressmaker-made." Indeed, Calliope and Hannah and Lydia Eider had been physically cast in the same mold of prettiness and of proportion, but only Lydia had come into her own.

And then Calliope came down, and she was bringing a long, white box. She sat before me with the box on her knee and I saw that she was flushing like a girl.

"I expect," she said, "you'll think I'm real worldly-minded. I dunno. Mebbe I am. But when I get out in company and see everybody wearing the dark shades like they do here in Friendship so's their dresses won't show dirt, I declare I want to stand up and tell 'em: 'Colors! Colors! What'd the Lord put colors in the world for? Burn up your black and brown and gray and get into somethin' happy-colored, and see the difference it'll make in the way you feel inside.' I get so," Calliope said solemnly, "that when I put on my best black taffeta with the white turnovers, I declare I could slit it up the back seam. And I've felt that way a long time. And that's what made me—"

She fingered the white box and lifted the cover from a mass of tissue-paper.

"When Uncle Ezra Marsh died sixteen years ago last Summer," she said, "he left me a little bit of money—just a little dab, but enough to mend the wood-shed roof or buy a new cook-stove or do any of the useful things that's always staring you in the face. And I turned my back flat on every one of them. And I put the money in my pocket and went into the city. And there," said Calliope breathlessly, "I bought this."

She unwrapped it from its tissues, and it was yards and yards of lustrous, exquisite soft silk, colored rose-pink, and responding in folds almost tenderly to the hand that touched it.

"It's mine," Calliope said, "mine. My dress. And I haven't ever hed the sheer, moral courage to get it made up."

And that I could well understand. For though Calliope's delicacy of figure and feature would have been well enough become by the soft pink, Friendship would have lifted its hands to see her so and she would instantly have been "talked about."

"Seems to me," Calliope said, smoothing the silk, "that if I could have on a dress like this I'd feel another kind of being—sort o' free and liberty-like. Of course," she added hurriedly, "I know well enough a pink dress ain't what-you-might-say important. But land, land, how I'd like one on me in company! Ain't it funny," she added, "in the city nobody'd think anything of my wearing it. In the city they sort of seem to know colors ain't wicked, so's they look nice. I use' to think," Calliope added, laughing a little, "I'd hev it made up and go to town and wear it on the street. All alone. Even if it was a black street. I guess you'll think I'm terrible foolish."

But with that the idea which had come to me vaguely and as an impossibility, took shape; and I poured it out to Calliope as a thing possible, desirable, inevitable.

"Calliope!" I said. "Bring the silk to my house. Let Madame Josephine make it up. And next week come with me to the city—for the opera. We will have a box—and afterward supper—and you shall wear the pink gown—and a long, black silk coat of mine—"

"You're fooling—you're fooling!" Calliope cried, trembling.

But I made her know how in earnest I was; for, indeed, on the instant my mind was made up that the thing must be, that the lonely pink dress must see the light and with it Calliope's shy hopes, long cherished. And so, before I left her, it was arranged. She had agreed to come next morning to my house, if Madame Josephine were willing, bringing the rose-pink silk.

"Me!" she said at last. "Why, me! Why, it's enough to make all the me's I've been turn over in their graves. And I guess they hev turned and come trooping out, young again."

Then, as she stood up, letting the soft stuff unwind and fall in shining abandon, we heard a little noise—tapping, insistent. It was very near to us—quite in the little passage; and as Calliope turned with the silk still in her arms the door swung back and there stood Grandma Hawley. She was leaning on her thick stick, and her gray lace cap was all awry and a mist of the fine, driving rain was on her gray hair.

"I got m' feet wet," she said querulously. "M' feet are wet. Lyddy's gone to Mis' Sykes's. I comeback to stay a spell till it dries off some—"

"Grandma!" Calliope cried, hurrying to her, "I didn't hear you come in. I never heard you. Come out by the kitchen fire and set your feet in the oven."

Calliope had tossed the silk on the table and had run to the old woman with outstretched hand; but the outstretched hand Grandma Hawley did not see. She stood still, looking by Calliope with a manner rather than an expression of questioning.

"What is't?" she asked, nodding direction.

Calliope understood, and she slightly lifted her brows and her thin shoulders, and seemed to glance at me.

"It's some pink for a dress, gramma," she said.

Grandma Hawley came a little nearer, and stood, a neat, bent figure in rusty black, looking, down at the sumptuous, shining lengths. Then she laid her brown, veined hand upon the silk—and I remember now her fingers, being pricked and roughened by her constant needle, caught and rubbed on the soft stuff.

"My soul," she said, "it's pink silk."

She lifted her face to Calliope, the perpetual trembling of her head making her voice come tremulously.

"That's what Abe Hawley was always talkin' when I married him," she said. "'A pink silk dress fer ye, Minnie. A fine pink silk to set ye off,' s' 'e over an' over. I thought I was a-goin' to hev it. I hed the style all picked out in my head. I know I use' to lay awake nights an' cut it out. But, time the cookin' things was paid for, the first baby come—an' then the other three to do for. An' Abe he didn't say pink silk after the fourth. But I use' to cut it out in the night, fer all that. I dunno but I cut it out yet, when I can't get to sleep an' my head feels bad. My head ain't right. It bothers me some, hummin' and ringin'. Las' night m' head—"

"There, there, gramma," said Calliope, and took her arm. "You come along with me and set your feet in the oven."

I had her other arm, and we turned toward the kitchen. And we were hushed as if we had heard some futile, unfulfilled wish of the dead still beating impotent wings.

In the kitchen doorway Hannah Hager was standing. She must have seen that glowing, heaped-up silk on the table, but it did not even hold her glance. For she had heard what Grandma Hawley had been saying, and it had touched her, who was so jealously devoted to the old woman, perhaps even more than it had touched Calliope and me.

"Miss Marsh, now," Hannah tried to say, "shall I put the butter that's left in the cookin'-butter jar?" And then her little features were caught here and there in the puckers of a very child's weeping, and she stood before us as a child might stand, crying softly without covering her face. She held out a hand to the old woman, and Calliope and I let her lead her to the stove. My heart went out to the little maid for her tears and to Calliope for the sympathy in her eyes.

Grandma Hawley was talking on.

"I must 'a' got a little cold," she said plaintively. "It always settles in my head. My head's real bad. An' now I got m' feet wet—"

II

To Madame Josephine, the modiste who sometimes comes to me with her magic touch, transforming this and that, I confided something of my plans for Calliope, asked her if she would do what she could. Her kindly, emotional nature responded to the situation as to a kind of challenge.

"Bien!" she cried. "We shall see. You say she is slim—petite—with some little grace? Bien!"

So when, next day, Calliope arrived at my house with her parcel brought forth for the first time in sixteen years, she found madame and me both tip-toe with excitement. And from some bewildering plates madame explained how she would cut and suit and "correct" mademoiselle.

"The effect shall be long, slim, excellent. Soft folds from one's waist—so. From one's shoulder—so. A line of velvet here and here and down. Bien! Mademoiselle will look younger than everyone! If mademoiselle would wave ze hair back a ver' little—so?" the French woman delicately advanced.

"Ma'moiselle," returned Calliope recklessly, "will do anything you want her to, short of a pink rose over one ear. My land, I never hed a dress before that I didn't hev to skimp the pattern and make it up less according to my taste than according to my cloth."

That day I sent to the city for a box at the opera. I chose "Faust," and smiled as I planned to sing the Jewel Song for Calliope before we went, and to laugh at her in her surprising rÔle of Butterfly. "Ah, je ris de me voir si belle." A lower proscenium box, a modest suite at a comfortable hotel, a little supper, a cab—I planned it all for the pleasure of watching her; and all this would, I knew, be given its significance by the wearing of the anomalous, rosy gown. And I loved Calliope for her weakness as we love the whip-poor-will for his little catching of the breath.

On the day that our tickets came Calliope appeared before me in some anxiety.

"Calliope," I said, without observing this, "our opera box is, so to speak, here."

But instead of the light in her face that I had expected:

"What night?" she abruptly demanded.

"For 'Faust,' on Wednesday," I told her.

And instead of her delight of which I had made sure:

"Will the six-ten express get us in the city too late?" she wanted to know.

And when I had agreed to the six-ten express:

"It's all right then," she said in relief. "They can hev it a little earlier and take the six-ten themselves instead of the accommodation. Hannah and Henry's going to get married a' Wednesday," she explained. "I hev to be here for that."

Then she told me of the simple plan for Hannah Hager's marriage to her good-looking giant. Naturally, Grandma Hawley could not think of "giving Hannah a wedding," so these poor little plans had been for some time wandering about unparented.

"I wanted," Calliope said, "she should be married in the church with Virginia creeper on the pew arms, civilized. But Hannah said that'd be putting on airs and she'd be so scairt she couldn't be solemn. Mis' Postmaster Sykes, she invited her real cordial to be married in her sitting-room, but Hannah spunked up and wouldn't. 'A sitting-room weddin',' s' she to me, private, ''d be like bein' baptized in the pantry. A parlor,' s' she, ''s the only true place for a wedding. And I haven't no parlor, so we'll go to the minister's and stand up in his parlor. Do you think,' s' she to me, real pitiful, 'Henry can respec' me with no place to set m' foot in to be married but jus' the public parsonage?' Poor little thing! Her wedding-dress is nothing but a last year's mull with a sprig in, either. And her traveling-dress to go to the city is her reg'lar brown Sunday suit."

"And they are going to the minister's?" I asked.

"Well, no," Calliope answered apologetically. "I asked them to be married at my house. I never thought about the opera when I done it. I never thought about anything but that poor child. I guess you'll think I'm real flighty. But I always think when two's married in the parsonage and the man pays the minister, it's like the bride is just the groom's guest at the cer'mony. And it ain't real dignified for her, seems though."

I knew well what this meant: That Calliope would have "asked in a few" and "stirred up" this and that delectable, and gone to no end of trouble and an expense which she could ill afford. Unless, as she was wont to say: "When it comes to doing for other people there ain't such a word as 'afford.' You just go ahead and do it and keep some rational yourself, and the afford 'll sort o' bloom out right, same's a rose."

So for Hannah, Calliope had caused things to "bloom right, same's a rose," as one knew by Hannah's happy face. On Tuesday she was helping at my house ("Brides always like extry money," Calliope had advanced when I had questioned the propriety of asking her to iron on the day before her marriage) and, on going unexpectedly to the kitchen I came on Hannah with a patent flat-iron in one hand and a piece of beeswax in the other, and Henry, her good-looking giant, was there also and was frankly holding her in his arms. I liked him for his manly way when he saw me and most of all that he did not wholly release her but, with one arm about her, contrived a kind of bow to me. But it was Hannah who spoke.

"Oh, ma'am," she said shyly, "I hope you'll overlook. We've hed an awful time findin' any place to keep company, only walkin' 'round the high-school yard!"

My heart was still warm within me at the little scene as I went upstairs to see Calliope in her final fitting of the rose-pink gown, the work on which had gone on apace. And I own that, as I saw her standing before my long triple mirrors, I was amazed. The rosy gown suited the little body wonderfully and with her gray hair and delicate brightness of cheeks, she looked like some figure on a fan, exquisitely and picturesquely painted. The gown was, as Calliope had said that a gown should be, "all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places, and little unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of having them if you wasn't real up in dress." It was a triumph for skillful madame, who had wrought with her impressionable French heart as well as with her scissors.

Calliope laughed as she looked over-shoulder in the mirrors.

"My soul," she said, "I feel like a sparrow with a new pink tail! I declare, the dress looks more like Lyddy Eider herself than it looks like me. Do you think I look enough like me so's you'd sense it was me?"

"Mademoiselle," said Madame Josephine simply, "has a look of another world."

"I wish't I could see it on somebody," Calliope said wistfully; and since I was far too tall and madame not sufficiently "slendaire," Calliope cried:

"There's Hannah! She's downstairs helping, ain't she? Couldn't Hannah come upstairs a minute and put it on? We're most of a size!"

And indeed they were, as I had noted, cast in the same mold of proportion and prettiness.

So, with madame just leaving for the city, and I obliged to go down to the village, Calliope and Hannah Hager were left alone with the rose-pink silk gown, which fitted them both. Ought I not to have known what would happen?

And yet it came as a shock to me when, an hour later, as I passed Calliope's gate on my way home, she ran out and stood before me in some unusual excitement.

"Do they take back your opera boxes?" she demanded.

"No," I assured her, "they do not. Nor," I added suspiciously, "do folk take back their promises, you know, Calliope!"

"Well," she said miserably, "I expec' I've done wrong by you. The righter you try to do by some folks seems 's though the wronger it comes down on others. Oh," she cried, "I wish't I always knew what was right! But I can't go to the opera and I can't sit in the box. Yes, sir—I guess you'll think I'm real flighty and I dunno but what I am. But I've give my pink silk dress to Hannah Hager for her wedding. And I've lied some. I've said I meant she should hev it all along!"

III

The news that Calliope was to "give Hannah Hager a wedding" was received in Friendship with unaffected pleasure. Every one liked the tireless little thing, and those who could do so sent something to Calliope's house for a wedding-gift. These things Calliope jealously kept secret, intending not to let Hannah see them until the very hour of the ceremony. But when on Wednesday, some while before the appointed time, I went to the house, Calliope took me to the dining-room where the gifts were displayed.

"Some of 'em's real peculiar," she confided; "some of 'em's what I call pick-up presents—things from 'round the house, you know. Mis' Postmaster Sykes she sent over the rug with the running dog on, and she's hed it in her parlor in a dark corner for years an' Hannah must have cleaned it many's the time. Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss sent her old drop-leaf mahogany table, being she's got a new oak. The Liberty girls sent two of their chickens, live, for the wedding lunch, and I dassent to kill them—I'm real queer like that—so I hed to send for the groom, and he run up noon-hour and done it. And so on. But quite a few things are new—the granite iron and the drip coffee-pot and the sweeper's all new. And did you hear what Gramma Hawley done? Drew five dollars of her burial money out of the savings bank and give it to Hannah right out. You know how Gramma fixed it—she had Zittelhof figger up her funeral expenses and she banked the sum, high and dry, and left herself just bare enough to live on coming in. But now she drew the five out and give Zittelhof to understand he'd hev to skimp some on her coffin. Hannah told me, crying like a child at the i-dee."

Calliope paused impressively, and shook her head at space.

"But wouldn't you have thought," she demanded, "that Lyddy Eider might have give Hannah a little something to wear? One of her old dresses for street would have sent Hannah cloud-high, and over. I s'pose you heard what she did send? Mis' Postmaster Sykes run over to tell me. A man from the city come up by trolley sense noon to-day, bringing a rug from Lyddy. Well, of course a rug's a rug," Calliope admitted, "but it ain't a dress, seem's though. Hannah knows about Gramma's an' Lyddy's, but she don't know a word about the other presents. I do admire a surprise."

As for me, I, too, love a surprise. And that was why I had sent to the station a bag packed for both Calliope and me; and I meant, when the wedding guests should have gone, to take no denial, but to hurry Calliope into her "black grosgrain with the white turnovers," and with her to catch the six-ten express as we had planned aforetime. For pink silk might appear and disappear, but "Faust" would still be "Faust."

There were ten guests at Hannah's wedding, friends of hers and of Henry's, pleasantly excited, pleasantly abashed.

"And not one word do they know about the pink silk," Calliope whispered me. "Hannah's going to come with it on—I let her take my tan ulster to wear over her, walking through the streets, so. Do you know," she said earnestly, "if it wasn't for disappointing you I wouldn't feel anything but good about that dress?"

"Ah, well, I won't be disappointed," I prophesied confidently.

Grandma Hawley was last to arrive. And the little old woman was in some stress of excitement, talking incessantly and disconnectedly; but this we charged to the occasion.

"My head ain't right," she said. "It ain't been right for a while back—it hums and rings some. When I went in the room I thought it was my head the matter. I thought I didn't see right. But I did—I did, Hannah said I did. My head felt some better this mornin', an' that was there, just the same. I thought I'd be down flat on my back when I got m' feet wet, but I'd be all right if m' head wa'n't so bad. I must tell Hannah what I done. Why don't Hannah come?"

Hannah was, as a matter of fact, somewhat late at her wedding. We were all in some suspense when we saw her at last, hurrying up the street with Henry, who had gallantly called to escort her; and Calliope and I went to the door to meet her.

But when Hannah entered in Calliope's tan ulster buttoned closely about her throat, she was strangely quiet and somewhat pale and her eyes, I was certain, were red with weeping.

"Is Gramma here?" she asked at once, and, at our answer, merely turned to hurry upstairs where Calliope and I were to adjust the secret wedding-gown and fasten a pink rose in her hair. And, as we went, Henry added still further to our anxiety by calling from the gay little crowd about him a distinctly soothing:

"Now, then. Now, then, Hannah!"

Up in Calliope's tiny chamber Hannah turned and faced us, still with that manner of suppressed and escaping excitement. And when we would have helped with the ulster she caught at its collar and held it about her throat as if, after all, she were half minded to depart from the place and let her good-looking giant be married alone.

"Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am," she said, trembling, "oh, Miss Marsh. I can't dare tell you what I done."

With that she broke down and cried, and Calliope promptly took her in her arms, as I think that she would have liked to take the whole grieving world. And now, as she soothed her, she began gently to unbutton the tan ulster, and Hannah let her take it off. But even the poor child's tears had not prepared us for what was revealed.

Hannah had come to her wedding wearing, not the rose-pink silk, but the last year's mull "with the sprig in."

"Well, sir!" cried Calliope blankly. "Well, Hannah Hager—"

The little maid sat on the foot of the bed, sobbing.

"Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am," she said, "you know—don't you know, ma'am?—how I was so glad about the dress you give me't I was as weak as a cat all over me. All las' night in the evenin' I was like a trance an' couldn't get my supper down, an' all. An' Gramma, she was over to Mis' Sykes's to supper an' hadn't seen it. An' Gramma an' I sleep together, an' I went an' spread the dress on the bed, an' I set side of it till Henry come. An' I l-left it there to hev him go in an' l-look at it. An' we was in the kitchen a minute or two first. An' nex' we knew, Gramma, she stood in the inside door. An' I thought she was out of her head she was so wild-like an' laughin' an' cryin'. An' she set down on a chair, an' s' she: 'He's done it. He's done it. He's kep' his word. Look—look on my bed,' s' she, 'an' see if I ain't seen it right. Abe Hawley,' s' she, 'he's sent me my pink silk dress he wanted to, out o' the grave!'"

Hannah's thin, rough little hands were clinched on her knee and her eyes searched Calliope's face.

"Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am," she said, "she was like one possessed, beggin' me to look at it an' tell her if it wasn't so. She thought mebbe it might be her head. So I went an' told her the dress was hers," the little maid sobbed. "I was scairt she'd make herself sick takin' on so. An' afterwards I couldn't a-bear to tell her any different. Ma'am, if you could 'a' seen her! She took her rocker an' set by the bed all hours, kind o' gentlin' the silk with her hands. An' she wouldn't go to bed an' disturb it off, an' I slep' on the dinin'-room lounge with the shawl over me. An' this m-mornin' she went on just the same. An' after dinner Lyddy sent a man from town with a rug for me, an' I set on the back stoop so's not to see him, I was cryin' so. An' when I come in Gramma hed shut the bedroom door an' gone. I couldn't trust me even to l-look in the bedroom for fear I'd put it on. An' I couldn't take it away from her—I couldn't. Not with all she's done for me, an' the five dollars an' all. Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am—" Hannah ended helplessly.

It seemed to me that I had never known Calliope until that moment.

"Gracious," she said to Hannah calmly, "crying that way for a little pink silk dress, and Henry waiting for you downstairs! Wipe up your eyes this instant minute, Hannah, and get to 'I will'!"

I think that this attitude of Calliope's must have tranquillized the wildest. In spite of the reality of the tragedy, it was no time at all until, having put the pink rose in Hannah's hair, anyway, Calliope and I led the little bride downstairs. For was there not a reality of happiness down there?

"After all, Henry was marrying you and not the dress, you know," Calliope reminded her on the landing.

"That's what he keeps a-sayin'," consented Hannah with a wan little smile, "but oh, ma'am—" she added, for Hannah was all feminine.

And when the "I will" had been said, I loved the little creature for taking Grandma Hawley in her arms.

"Did they tell you what I done?" the old woman questioned anxiously when Hannah kissed her. "I was savin' it to tell you, an' it went out o' my head. An' I dunno—did you know what I done?" she persisted.

But the others crowded forward with congratulation and, as was their fashion, with teasing; and presently I think that even the rosy gown was forgotten in Hannah's delight over her unexpected gifts. The graniteware, the sweeper, the rug with the running dog—after all, was ever any one so blessed?

And as I watched them—Hannah and her great, good-looking adoring giant—I who, like Calliope, love a surprise, caught a certain plan by its shining wings and held it close. They say that when one does this such wings bear one away—and so it proved.

I found my chance and whispered my plan to Hannah, half for the pastime of seeing the quickening color in her cheek and the light in her eyes. Then I told the giant, chiefly for the sake of noting how some mischievous god smote him with a plague of blushes. And they both consented—and that is the way when one clings to the wings of a plan.

So it came about that in the happy bustle of the parting, as Hannah in her "regular brown Sunday suit" went away on Henry's arm, they two and I exchanged glances of pleasant significance. Then, when every one had gone, I turned to Calliope with authority.

"Put on," I bade her, "your black grosgrain silk with the white turnovers—and mind you don't slit it up the back seam!"

"I'm a-goin' to do my dishes up," said Calliope. "Can't you set a spell and talk it over?"

"Hurry," I commanded, "or we shall miss the six-ten express!"

"What do you mean?" she asked in alarm.

"Leave everything," said I. "There's a box waiting for us at the opera to-night. And supper afterward."

"You ain't—" she said tremulously.

"I am," I assured her firmly, "and so are you. And Hannah and Henry are going with us. Hurry!"

IV

is, in effect, the spirit of the "Ah, je ris de me voir si belle" of "Marguerite" when she opens the casket of jewels. As we sat, the four of us, in the dimness of the opera box—Calliope in her black silk with the white turnovers, Hannah in her "regular brown Sunday suit," and Henry and I, it seemed to me that Marguerite's song was really concerning the delight of rose-pink silk. And I found myself grieving anew for the innocent hopes that had been dissolved, immaterial as Abe Hawley's message from the grave.

Then the curtain fell on the third act and the soft thunder of applause spent itself and the lights leaped up. And immediately I was aware of a conspicuously high-pitched voice at the door of the box, a voice which carried with it some consciousness of elaborate self-possession.

"Really!" said the voice. "Of all people! My dear Hannah—and Calliope Marsh! You butterflies—"

I looked up, and at first all that I saw was a gown which "laid smooth down—and then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft—and didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong"; a gown that was "dressmaker made"; a gown, in short, such as Lydia Eider "always hed on." And there beside us stood Lydia Eider herself, wearing some exquisite, priceless thing of pink chiffon and old lace, with a floating, glittering scarf on her arms.

I remember that she seemed some splendid, tropic bird alight among our nun-like raiment. A man or two, idling attendance, were rapidly and perfunctorily presented to us—one, who was Lydia's adopted brother, showing an amused cordiality to Henry. And I saw how the glasses were instantly turned from pit and boxes toward her—this girl who, with Calliope and Hannah, had been cast in one mold of prettiness and proportion and who alone of the three, as I thought, had come into her own.

And Lydia said:

"Will you tell me how on earth Grandma Hawley came to send me a pink silk dress to-day? You didn't know! But she did—on my honor. It came this afternoon by the man I sent out to you, Hannah. And so decently made—how can it have happened? Made for me too—positively I can wear it—though nearly everything I have is pink. But how did Grandma come to do it? And where did she get it? And why—"

She talked on for a little, elaborating, wondering. But I fancy that she must have thought us uncommonly stupid, for none of us had the faintest suggestion to offer. We listened, and murmured a bit about the health of Grandma Hawley, and Henry said some hesitating thanks, in which Hannah barely joined, for the wedding gift of the rug, but none of us gave evidence. And at last, with some gracious word, Lydia Eider left the box, trailing her pink chiffon skirts and saying the slight good-by which utterly forgets one.

But when she had gone, Calliope laughed, softly and ambiguously and wholly contagiously, so that Hannah, whose face had begun to pucker like a child's, unwillingly joined her. And then, partly because of Henry's reassuring, "Now then, now then, Hannah," and partly at the touch of his big hand and in the particular, delicious embarrassment which comes but once, Hannah tremulously spoke her conclusion:

"I don't care," she said, "I don't care! I'm glad—for Gramma."

Calliope sat smiling, looking, in her delicate color and frailty and the black and white of her dress, like some one on a fan, exquisitely and appropriately painted.

"I was thinking," she said brightly to Hannah, "going without a thing is some like a jumping tooth. It hurts you before-hand, but when it's gone for good all the hurt sort of eases down and peters out and can't do you any more harm."

But I think they both knew that this was not all. For some way, outside the errantry of prettiness and proportion, Calliope and Hannah too had come into their own.

I looked at Calliope, her face faintly flushed by the unwonted hour; at Hannah, rosy little bride; and at her adoring giant over whom some god had cast the usual spell of wedding blushes.

Verily, I thought, would not one say there is rose pink enough in the world for us all?

As the curtain rose again Calliope leaned toward me. "I don't believe any dress," she said, "pink silk or any other kind, ever dressed up so many folks's souls!"