My back door's jest opposite hers;
it's across the river, to be sure, but it's the narrer part, and I
can see everything she does as plain as daylight. She washed a
Monday, and she ain't taken her clothes in yet, and it's Thursday.
She may be bleachin' of 'em out, but it looks slack. I said to Si
last night I should stand it till 'bout Friday--seein' 'em lay on the
grass there--but if she didn't take 'em in then, I should go over and
offer to help her. She has a fire in the settin'-room 'most every
night, though we ain't had a frost yet; and as near's I can make out,
she's got full red curtains hangin' up to her windows. I ain't sure,
for she don't open the blinds in that room till I get away in the
morning, and she shuts 'em before I get back at night. Si don't know
red from green, so he's useless in such matters. I'm going home late
to-night, and walk down on that side o' the river, so 't I can call
in after dark and see what makes her house light up as if the sun was
settin' inside of it."
As a matter of fact, Lyddy was revelling in house-furnishing of a
humble sort. She had a passion for colour. There was a red-and-
white straw matting on the sitting-room floor. Reckless in the
certain possession of twenty dollars a month, she purchased yards
upon yards of turkey red cotton; enough to cover a mattress for the
high-backed settle, for long curtains at the windows, and for
cushions to the rocking-chairs. She knotted white fringes for the
table-covers and curtains, painted the inside of the fireplace red,
put some pots of scarlet geraniums on the window-sills, filled a
wall-pocket with ferns and tacked it over an ugly spot in the
plastering, edged her work-basket with a tufted trimming of scarlet
wool, and made an elaborate photograph case of white crash and red
cotton that stretched the entire length of the old-fashioned
mantelshelf, and held pictures of Mr.
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