Page:The Asheboro Courier, Volume IX, No. 26.pdf/1

 

VOL. IX

 

 

A quiet, elderly lady, in a stone-colored merino dress and a black lace cap. had been anxiously peeping out of the window of a pretty house in Milk-town, at intervals throughout the dull cold Winter afternoon of day not long gone by.

When about 5 o’clock, a young girl, showily clad in terra-cotta red, with an impossible bird, in a cap of impossible fur, was seen making stately progress down the long street, holding in her arms an immense and puffy brown-paper parcel.

Occasionally this young person made an effort to look behind her without turning her head, and when at she arrived at the doorsteps of the house we have mentioned, she turned coquettishly to see who it was who had been walking behind her for some distance.

Seeing that it was only a hobbledehoy apprentice from the tinman’s, with a length of stovepipe under his arms, a black smirch on his nose, and no appreciation of a terra-cotta waist coat, twenty inches in circumference in his countenance, she turned away in disgust and rung the bell violently, leaning her back against the door, and regarding the apprentice with a scorn which amazed him, and which proceeded from the fact that he was not the fine-looking young mand, with mustache, whom she had imaged to be following her.

In an instant more she tumbled into the arms of the elderly lady, who had opened the door with unexpected promptitude, amid the derisive laughter of the youthful tinman.

"Bless me! I hope you haven’t hurt yourself?" said the old lady. "And is this really Mrs. Ruffit’s dress at last? We’d almost given it up."

"Madame says she couldn't help it," said the girl, rubbing her elbow, which had come into sharp contact with the door. "It's such a busy time;" and delivering the parcel to the old lady, she walked away, with dark views of life in her young bosom, and an uplifted nose that bespoke scorn of all apprentices.

Meanwhile the old lady hurried into the sitting room at the back of house, and placing the parcel upon a table cried, with a gasp of relief:

"There it is, Rebecca; and you needn’t have worried about it all day, at all."

At those words a lady, who was still only middle aged, and who was sitting wrapped in a voluminous double gown in a great armchair near the little Franklin stove, started to her feet, gave a cry of delight, seized the parcel, opened it at one end, and emptied from it a ruby colored silk dress, all nounces, furbelows and cachemire beading, which she instantly proceeded to try one

The old lady superintended the performance, pronounced the fit perfect, picked out a lingering basting thread and spread the train abroad, while Mrs. Ruffit, who was fat and blonde, and very gushing, constantly repeated:

"You know it’s the first time I’ve appeared in colors for years, and the Dumsdays are so stylish. You know I would wish to appear particularly well. And does it taper in nicely at the waist, Aunt Betsey? and does the train turn when I walk?"

At last even this nervous lady was satisfied, and having looked at her back in two glasses, declared that she must take a nap before she began to dress, and vanished for that purpose.

"I didn't beg and pray her, she asked me for a little tea, and she wasn’t tipsy," sobbed Aunt Betsy.

Look at the belt, it wont meet! Can't you see how I’m puffing up all over? I’m going to die!"

 

She was a remarkably sensible young lady who made a request of her friends that after her decease she should not be buried by the side of a brook, where babbling lovers would wake her from her dreams, nor in any grand cemetary, where sight-seers, conning over epitaphs, might distract her, but be laid away to take her last sleep under the counter of some merchant who did not advertise in the papers. There, she said, was to be found peace passing all understanding, a depth of quit slumber on which the sound of neither the bouyant foot of youth nor the weary shuffle of old age would ever intrude. 