The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1903-10-15

ltS LOT PegSy, isn't IL!
Eyes, nam 'selle."
"Did you buy it yourself, Anty-
wine?"
Il have some money that | make in
Belleville," he apologized. "Shick
shack and the woman have not got
some tas'e in clothes for young girls.
You, nam selle, have that tas'e."
"If you think l really have. Anty-
wine, you must let me help Peggy
make this dress"
ooh, man selle! 1t is what | would
ask, but dare mott"
Il would love to do it, and Peggy
will be so glad to have a new Dress
Peggy was glad when Ann waylaid
her in the evening Her face quivered
and she said, "Goody!" She talked
the great event quite out with Anty-
wine, standing beside their cabin, be-
cause they seldom spoke to each other
in the presence of Shickshacks wife.
Then there was the joy of going to the
| tavern and learning neat stitches while
Ann cut and basted and fitted. The
slow process of hand sewing went on
a part of every day, as the two girls
had time, until Peggy, by accident of
| Antywine's choice, stood at last un-
consciously arrayed in the colors OF
| Spain. The garment was gathered to
her slim figure under the bust, whence
escaping fullness hung as low Us her
ankles. This short-waisted look, and
the gorgeous setting of colors for her
| pale olive skin, and her hair cut in
the fashion of the middle ages,
suddenly developed in her a charm.
People noticed her, and said that she
was not exactly growing pretty, but
there was something to her. The con-
fidence of knowing how to do things
appeared in her face. For, having be-
gun with the needle, Ann Rutledge
went on to knitting and spinning.
Ann had pretty clothes, for her father
never rode to Springfield without
bringing her gift, and her mother
even INDUCED her with a cashmere
pelisse modelled after one worn by the
doctors wife, who came a bride to
New Salem. Niane saw with some re-
sentiment her elder sister take things
which had usually fallen to her and
cut them over for the Indians adopted
daughter Thus Peggy became trans
| formed in every garment except her
moccasins To these heelless, quill
embroidered shoe she chung with the
instinct of a wilderness lover They
were light and soft and small, hamper
ing her no more than her own muscles.
Antywine made them for her when he
made his own. In return she knitted
wooden stockings to keep him and her
| foster father warm in winter.
When Peggy first learned to knit
she pulled the yarn SO tight that the
stocking leg stood above the needles
as stiff as a board triangle and had
to be raveled and done over.
You're not building stake-and-
ridered fences for your men folks"
laughed Ann.
Shickshack's wife gave Peggy many
tasks to do, but in house where there
was no home-making, strewn with the
| appointments of dirty camp, the
tasks were sordid and often useless.
Sally let pots and kettles litter the
hearth, her cob pipe dropped ashes
into a dinner hanging on the crane;
joists were grimy, and dust stood thick
on the pewter she got with her first
husband and was too stingy to use.
But her splint- chairs had to
| be secured with soap and sand every
week, and she made the lame girl, in
deerskin dress, creep inch by inch over
the puncheon floor, cleaning it by the
same hard process. When the weather
was bad Peggy's tasks were doubled,
and her struggle with marks OF New
Salem clay became hopeless.
| Shickshaclt's wife never seemed to
look up; plodding along the street, her
sullen eyes fixed on the ground, she eX-
changed no word with neighbor.
Shickshack's disgust was extreme with
sordid housekeeping he had nowhere
| encountered in an Indian village.
| The changes in Peggy Shickshack
were not without influence on her
schoolmates, but the Spaniard, with
pIIue VI HeI OWL, uclu dlOOl llOH
them, They swung their feet from
tall benches and whispered behind
| their books while Peggy fiercely
| studied. When the Testament class
| stood up she was at the head Her
progress through the simple course was
| so rapid that Mnter Grayham calcu-
lated she would know in year all
| hat he was able to teach her.
| Antywine, whose stepmother had
never sent him to school, was nine
| teen years old, and could not read.
Peggy began to teach him durin
| long spring twilghts. There was a
large stone halfway across the valley.
| sheltered as the sun slipped north Of
afternoons, under which Peggy hid her
outgrown lesson book for Antywine
Whatever direction his days hunt led
| him. he made a detour to arrive at the
stone, and If he arrived first, sat down
TO study If Peggy carrying her dinner
reticule home from school, reached
| it first, she waited.
| They cot opd hold tbair hook tn