Her superb brocade, pale-tinted, low-necked, and
short-sleeved, her happy, airy manner, her glowing though pale face,
her dancing eyes, her ever-hovering smile of perfect kindness, all
flashed upon me in the sudden light as I roused myself. I insisted
upon gazing and admiring, yet I ended by indignantly weeping to find
that my gentle little mother could be so splendid and wear so
triumphant an expression. "She is frightened at my fine gown!" my
mother exclaimed, with a changed look of self-forgetting concern; and
I never lost the lesson of how much more beautiful her noble glance
was than her triumphant one. A faded bill has been preserved, for the
humor of it, from Salem days, in which it is recorded that for the
year 1841 she ordered ten pairs of number two kid slippers,--which was
not precisely economical for a young lady who needed to earn money by
painting, and who denied herself a multitude of pleasures and comforts
which were enjoyed by relatives and friends.
In our early experience of English society, my mother's suppressed
fondness for the superb burst into fruition, and the remnants of such
indulgence have turned up among severest humdrum for many years; but
soon she refused to permit herself even momentary extravagances. To
those who will remember duty, hosts of duties appeal, and it was not
long before my father and mother began to save for their children's
future the money which flowed in. Miss Cushman's vagary of an amusing
watch-chain was exactly the sort of thing which they never imitated;
they smiled at it as the saucy tyranny over a great character of great
wealth.
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