Although
Mrs. Crane was acknowledged by her best friends to be a peculiar
person and very set in her ways, she was much respected, and one
acquaintance vied with another in making up for her melancholy
seclusion by bringing her all the news they could gather. She had been
left alone many years before by the sudden death of her husband from
sunstroke, and though she was by no means poor, she had, as some one
said, "such a pretty way of taking a little present that you couldn't
help being pleased when you gave her anything."
For a lover of society, such a life must have had its difficulties at
times, except that the Ridge road was more traveled than any other in
the township, and Mrs. Crane had invented a system of signals, to
which she always resorted in case of wishing to speak to some one of
her neighbors.
The afternoon was wearing late, one day toward the end of summer, and
Mercy Crane sat in her doorway dressed in a favorite old-fashioned
light calico and a small shoulder shawl figured with large palm
leaves. She was making some tatting of a somewhat intricate pattern;
she believed it to be the prettiest and most durable of trimmings, and
having decorated her own wardrobe in the course of unlimited leisure,
she was now making a few yards apiece for each of her more intimate
friends, so that they might have something to remember her by. She
kept glancing up the road as if she expected some one, but the time
went slowly by, until at last a woman appeared to view, walking fast,
and carrying a large bundle in a checked handkerchief.
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