But the Old Lady got up nevertheless, for she knew Crooked
Jack would be coming early to finish the garden. She arranged
her beautiful, thick, white hair very carefully, and put on
her purple silk dress with the little gold spots in it. The
Old Lady always wore silk from motives of economy. It was much
cheaper to wear a silk dress that had belonged to her mother
than to buy new print at the store. The Old Lady had plenty of
silk dresses which had belonged to her mother. She wore them
morning, noon, and night, and Spencervale people considered it
an additional evidence of her pride. As for the fashion of
them, it was, of course, just because she was too mean to have
them made over. They did not dream that the Old Lady never put
on one of the silk dresses without agonizing over its
unfashionableness, and that even the eyes of Crooked Jack cast
on her antique flounces and overskirts was almost more than
her feminine vanity could endure.

In spite of the fact that the Old Lady had not welcomed the
new day, its beauty charmed her when she went out for a walk
after her dinner--or, rather, after her mid-day biscuit. It
was so fresh, so sweet, so virgin; and the spruce woods around
the old Lloyd place were athrill with busy spring doings and
all sprinkled through with young lights and shadows. Some of
their delight found its way into the Old Lady's bitter heart
as she wandered through them, and when she came out at the
little plank bridge over the brook down under the beeches, she
felt almost gentle and tender once more. There was one big
beech there, in particular, which the Old Lady loved for
reasons best known to herself--a great, tall beech with a
trunk like the shaft of a gray marble column and a leafy