"Oh yes, and tell it long, long, mother."

"I was a little girl then, so the cloak was short, and so the story. Red
was the color I most admired when I was ten years old. It became me, so
I thought, for I was almost as dark skinned as an Indian. Folks called
me Widow Thayer's red-winged blackbird when I wore my cloak, of which I
was very proud. It had no sleeves and came down to my feet and was
closed at the neck with a fastening of silk cord braided in a pretty
pattern.

"I went to meeting in it all one winter, proud and gay, but never wore it
on any other day except the Sabbath. At the end of winter it was packed
away in a great chest where our winter clothing was kept in summer with
tansy laid among the garments to prevent moths. My red cloak was placed
at the bottom of the chest and I myself spread an unnecessary number of
green tansy sprays over it. I never thought of the cloak again until the
next winter. When it was taken out for me to wear one cold November
Sabbath, what was my grief to see the cloak, as I thought, ruined. The
tansy leaves had printed their exact shapes in a dark brown color all
over the back, which had lain uppermost in the bottom of the chest. The
pressure and the heat had acted like a dye. I cried my eyes red and
would not go to meeting. Every one thought the cloak was spoilt. But one
day the minister's wife called at our house, and the sad tale of the
cloak was related to her, and asking to see it she said, "Why, if it
wasn't pretty before--and I never liked red for little girls--it
certainly is now. It is beautiful with those brown leaves; it looks
almost like a palm-leaf cashmere shawl." Now a palm-leaf cashmere shawl
was the finest and most costly outer garment a woman could possess in
those days. My mother and sisters agreed with the minister's wife, as
her opinion about all women's concerns was as much respected as was her
husband's on religious matters. So I began to wear the cloak again, and
people thought it was a new one, and wondered how my mother could be so
extravagant when she was so poor. But the cloak was much admired and
thought to become me more than the last year's red one. The secret was
not kept long for the minister's wife explained it to someone to free my
mother from the charge of extravagance. Soon everybody knew it and many
inquiries were made how it happened. Some of our neighbor's daughters
even tried to produce the same effects on their dresses and cloaks by
pre