Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/224

 richest humour, as in the story of the “Patch-Work Quilt,” and that deep and startling tragedy on which she more commonly relies.

 

sleigh, gorgeous with yellow paint and gilding, drawn by two horses and a leader, stopped with a dash by the dooryard gate. A troop of girls, cloaked and hooded to the chin, were disengaging themselves from the buffalo-robes and leaping cheerily out on either side, while the driver stood in front, bending backward in a vigorous effort to hold in his horses, which every instant gave a leap and a pull upon the lines, which set the bells a-ringing and the girls a-laughing with a burst of music that went through the old house like a flash of sunshine. The sleigh dashed up the lane in quest of a new load, while the cargo it had just left were busy as so many humming-birds in Julia’s dressing-room. Cloaks were heaped in a pile on the bed, hoods were flung off, and half a dozen bright, smiling faces were peeping at themselves in the glass. Never was an old-fashioned mirror so beset. Flaxen and jetty ringlets, braids of chestnut, brown and ashy gold flashed on its surface—white muslins, rose-coloured crapes, and silks of cerulean blue floated before it like a troop of sunset clouds—eyes glanced in and out like stars reflected in a fountain, and soft, red lips trembled over its surface like rosebuds flung upon the same bright waters.

Again the sleigh dashed up to the gate, and off once more. Then we all gathered to the out room, sat demurely down by the quilt, and began to work in earnest. Such frolic and fun and girlish wit—such peals of silvery laughter as rang through that old house were enough to make the worm-eaten rafters sound again—such a snipping of thread and breaking of needles—such demand for cotton and such graceful rolling of spools across the “rising sun” could only be witnessed in a New England quilting frolic. The fire snapped and blazed with a sort of revel cheerfulness; it danced up and down over the old mirror that hung in a tarnished frame 