She wore long blue silk mitts wrought
with blue, blue satin shoes, and blue silk clocked stockings. And she
wore a blue crape mantle that was brought from over seas, and a blue
velvet hat, with a long blue ostrich feather curled over it--it was
so long it reached her shoulder, and waved when she walked; and she
carried a little blue crape fan with ivory sticks." So the women and
girls told each other when the Squire's bride had been dead nearly
seventy years.
The blue bride attire was said to be still in existence, packed away
in a cedar chest, as the Squire had ordered after his wife's death.
"He stood over the woman that took care of his wife whilst she packed
the things away, and he never shed a tear, but she used to hear him
a-goin' up to the north chamber nights, when he couldn't sleep, to
look at 'em," the women told.
People had thought the Squire would marry again. They said Evelina,
who was only four years old, needed a mother, and they selected one
and another of the good village girls. But the Squire never married.
He had a single woman, who dressed in black silk, and wore always a
black wrought veil over the side of her bonnet, come to live with
them, to take charge of Evelina. She was said to be a distant
relative of the Squire's wife, and was much looked up to by the
village people, although she never did more than interlace, as it
were, the fringes of her garments with theirs.
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