Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1904-07-23


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 Shickshackss wife.
Then there was the joy Of going to the
tavern and learning neat stitches Will
Ann cut and basted and fitted. The
slow process Of hand sewing went on
part of every day, as the two girls
had time, until Peggy, by accident OF
Antywine's choice, stood at last nm
consciously arrayed in the colors or
Spain. The garment was gathered to
her slim figure under the bust, whence
escaping fullness hung as low as 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 bride to
New Salem. Viane saw with some re-
~ -, 49,
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 sh oes she chung with the
instinct of 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 board triangle and had
to be rayeled 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-bottomed 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 1t 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
Shickshack's wife never seemed to
loon up; piodding along the street, her
sullen eyes fixed on the ground. she ex-
changed no word with a 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
pride of her own, held aloof from
them, %ney swing 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 Minter Grayham calcu-
lated she would know in a year all
that 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 during
long spring twHights 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 uiTtCtlOu us Jay nuut LED
him. ne made detour to arrive at the
stone, and IL he arrived first, sat down
to study If Peggy. carrying her dinner
reticule home from school, reached
it first. she waited.
They sat and held their book to-
gether. English spelling provoked
Canadian ordinations; but he had
to spur him not only Peggy. but the
powerful example of Sieur Abe Lin
coin. studying every spare minute.
Antywine knew where. the best SWIM
ming places were in the Sangamon.
Sometimes he came to his lesson, his
blond hair separated into dark clinging
tendrils, which. as they dried. became
q powder of gold-dust curls around his
face and temples. II Peggy could not
keep her fingers from touching this
fleece. Antywine pretended he did not
know it, His hands and shoulders
worked as hard as his mind With
shrugs and gesticulating fingers he