on the waists
too--I was lookin' over the child sizes, next table, an' I see the whole
business.

"I will say their talk was wonderful pretty. It run on sort o' easy,
slippin' along over little laughs an' no hard work to keep it goin'.
Abel had a nice way o' cuttin' his words out sharp--like they was made
o' somethin' with sizin' on the back an' stayed where he put 'em. An'
his laugh would sort o' clamp down soft on a joke an' make it double
funny. An' Delia, she was right back at him, give for take, an' though
she was rill genial, she was shy. An' come to think of it, Abel was just
as full o' his fancyin's then as he is now.

"'Old clothes,' he says to her, 'always seems to me sort o' haunted.'

"'Haunted?' I know she asks him, wonderin'.

"'All steeped in what folks have been when they've wore 'em,' s'e, 'an'
givin' it out again.'

"'Oh ...' Delia says, 'I never thought o' that before.'

"An' she see what he meant, too. Delia wa'n't one to get up little wavy
notions like that, but she could see 'em when told. An' neither was she
one to do one way instead of another by just her own willin' it, but if
somebody pointed things out to her, then she'd see how, an' do the
right. An' I think Abel understood that about her--that her soul was
sort o' packed down in her an' would hev to be loosened gentle, before
it could speak. Like Peleg Bemus says about his flute," Calliope said,
smiling, "that they's something packed deep down in it that can't say
things it knows."

"'Clothes folks wear, rooms they live in, things they use--they all get
like the folks that use 'em,' Abel says, layin' black with black an'
white with white, on to the waist table. 'It makes us want to step
careful, don't it?' s'e. 'I think,' s'e, simple, '_your_ dresses--an'
ribbins--an' your veil--must go about doin' pleasant things without
you.'

"'Oh, no,' says Delia, demure, 'I ain't near good enough, Mr. Halsey;
you mustn't think that,' she says--an' right while he was lookin' gentle
an' clerical an' ready to help her, she dimples out all over her face.
'Besides,' she says, 'I ain't enough dresses to spare away from me for
that. I ain't but about two!' s'she. An' when a girl is all rose pink
and sky blue and dainty neat, a man loves to hear her brag how few
dresses she's got, an' Abel wa'n't the exception.

"'Same as a lily,' says he; 'they only have _one_ dress. Now, what else
shall I do?'

"Well, at sharp nine the Cemetery Auxiliary come to