ough its hoarded relics, and reduced
the faded finery to a state best described by Diadema as "reg'lar
riddlin' sieves." She had brought the tattered pile down in to the
kitchen, and had spent a tearful afternoon in cutting the good pieces
from the perforated garments. Three heaped-up baskets and a full
dish-pan were the result; and as she had snipped and cut and sorted,
one of her sentimental projects had entered her mind and taken complete
possession there.

"I declare," she said, as she drew her hooking-needle in and out, "I
wouldn't set in the room with some folks and work on these pieces; for
every time I draw in a scrap of cloth Lovice comes up to me for all the
world as if she was settin' on the sofy there. I ain't told you my plan,
Miss Hollis, and there ain't many I shall tell; but this rug is going to
be a kind of a hist'ry of my life and Lovey's wrought in together, just
as we was bound up in one another when she was alive. Her things and
mine was laid in one trunk, and the moths sha'n't cheat me out of 'em
altogether. If I can't look at 'em wet Sundays, and shake 'em out, and
have a good cry over 'em, I'll make 'em up into a kind of dumb show that
will mean something to me, if it don't to anybody else.

"We was the youngest of thirteen, Lovey and I, and we was twins. There
's never been more 'n half o' me left sence she died. We was born
together, played and went to school together, got engaged and married
together, and we all but died together, yet we wa'n't a mite alike.
There was an old lady come to our house once that used to say, 'There's
sister Nabby, now: she 'n' I ain't no more alike 'n if we wa'n't two;
she 's jest as diff'rent as I am t' other way.' Well, I know what I want
to put into my rag story, Miss Hollis, but I don't hardly know how to
begin."

Priscilla dropped her needle, and bent over the frame with interest.

"A spray of two roses in the centre,--there 's the beginning; why, don't
you see, dear Mrs. Bascom?"

"Course I do," said Diadema, diving to the bottom of the dish-pan. "I've
got my start now, and don't you say a word for a minute. The two roses
grow out of one stalk; they'll be Lovey and me, though I'm consid'able
more like a potato blossom. The stalk 's got to be green, and here
is the very green silk mother walked bride in, and Lovey and I had
roundabouts of it afterwards. She had the chicken-pox when we was about
four years old, and one of the first things I can remember is