Ten
years of scraping and saving were devoted to this sacred resolve, and
now, twenty years after the death of Abner Revercomb, she was wearing
a crape veil for him to his son's wedding. As she walked, so strong a
smell of camphor floated from her garments, that old Adam sneezed twice,
and then muttered hurriedly that "'twas the very season for chills."
Something of her secret pride in her garb of mourning had entered into
him while he limped beside her on his rheumatic old legs.
Instead of stopping with the others for the wedding feast at the
Solomon's cottage, Sarah pleaded a sudden palpitation of the heart, and
hurried home to put the house in order before the arrival of the bride.
Already she had prepared the best chamber and set the supper table with
her blue and white china, but as she walked quietly home from church
at the side of old Adam, she had remembered, with a sensation of panic,
that she had forgotten to make up the the feather bed, which she
rolled over for an airing. Not a speck of dust was left on the floor
or windows, and a little later, while she began spreading the sheets,
without waiting to remove her bonnet, she thought proudly that Judy
probably never stayed in so entirely respectable a chamber in her life.
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