That was the forgotten melody,—the song of her youth.

“Everything at her command

The Lady of the Lea.”

She was young again, singing on a grassy knoll, with the future all before her, with the years of her life still unlived.

“Oh, the Lady of the Lea

Fair and young and gay was she . . .”

Where had they gone, those years? Blown away by the winds you could not stop,—ticked off by the clock hands you could not stay.

“Dreaming visions longingly

The Lady of the Lea.”

Isabelle finished the last verse of the song. Abbie turned off the radio, performed all the little nightly duties about the house, and undressed for bed. When she had turned out the lights, she stood for a few minutes at the bedroom window looking out at the night. It was moonlight and cloudless and very still. The trees stood etched in black against the white of the snow, their shadows as real as their substance. For some time Abbie looked out at the cedars standing silently there in the snow and the moonlight, like old women listening for something,—perhaps the strains of a song of their youth, and the dreams of desire.

CHAPTER XXXIII

In the spring, Katherine’s affair with Jimmie Buchanan culminated in an engagement, duly announced on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie Deal, by way of an elaborate luncheon and the Sunday papers,—the wedding to take place in the early fall. The immediate effect upon Abbie was to have her begin a quilt for the bride-to-be, on Monday morning, as soon as the chickens were fed and the dishes washed. For some time she pondered whether to do “The Basket of Flowers” pattern, “The Rising Sun,” or “The Rose of Sharon,” eventually deciding on the rose pattern, done in pink and white. Grace came home to find her in a puddle of pink and white blocks, her blue-veined fingers trembling a little over the stitches.

Grace scolded. “Mother, whatever are you doing that for? You can walk into any department store now and buy these very same old-fashioned patterns.”

“They cost an awful lot.”

“Maybe they are expensive. All nice hand work is. But think of the labor! Please, Mother . . . I’ll be glad to get it for you . . . any pattern you say . . . if you’ll just put the thought about doing it yourself out of your mind.”

“No . . . it’s more like a real gift if you do it yourself.”

“But, Mother, Katherine wouldn’t care. And there’ll be thousands of stitches in it.”

“And a thousand thoughts of love caught in the stitches, Grace.”

No, you could not do much with old Abbie Deal when she had made up her mind.

Sometimes when she had sewed all afternoon she would walk over to Christine’s “to get the cricks out of her back.” On a cool April evening she found Christine sitting up close to her cook-stove cutting up potatoes for the morrow’s planting. She wore the inevitable faded blue calico dress gathered full at her portly waist line. Her little greasy braids, neither white nor gray, nor yet any particular color, were wound flat from ear to ear.