A bevy of neighbours and one or two dealers, including old Pop Tucker, were buzzing about these things, but what seemed to attract Mrs. Terry far more, were the pitiful little personal articles that belonged intimately to the life of Sallie Dearborn, and that she had never doubted would pass either to her own kin, or, if worthless, be destroyed instead of being exposed for criticism and sale, as the law ordains in the settling of an estate where no friendly hand intervenes.
Worn table-linen tied into bundles, underclothing, much darned stockings, shoes, a well-worn Bible filled with little memory markers bearing names and dates, a book filled with household recipes copied in a stiff, exact handwriting, and lastly, resting on the seat of a chintz-covered chair, as if its owner had left it there for a brief moment while she went to other tasks, was a deep work-basket, big as a peck measure. The inside pockets of this basket were filled with spools, needle-cases, tapes and all such gear; the outside bags held bits of half-finished work, and knitting, the rusty needles sticking from a ball of home-dyed blue-gray yarn, just as they had been laid away; while a thimble of an odd pineapple pattern hung on the top of a long darning needle that occupied the middle of the pincushion.
“This is simply cruel,” whispered Mrs. Terry, the electric wire look reappearing as she rumpled her hair and held the basket close to her as if to protect it. “There is nothing in this basket worth a nickel, unless that dingy thimble is gold, and to have it put up and sold to some one of those old cats yonder, who have been going about pinching and smelling everything, not that they mean to buy, but just to see, as that one with the green porcupine topknot in her hat said a minute ago, ‘what dear Sallie had that set her up so.’
“A lot of a woman’s secrets drop into her work-basket, and mix up with her pens and writing things when she’s alone, and it’s wicked to sell any of these things. I’m going to buy this basket, Mrs. Evan, and wrap it up in a pink paper and bury it if you’ll lend me a spade and the ground isn’t frozen too hard; if not, I’ll burn it.
“I mean to buy that old Bible, too, with all the births and deaths written in. The porcupine woman said she would buy it if it didn’t bring over a dollar, because she hadn’t had a chance to ‘leaf it over well’ and there were dates in it she wanted to write out and there might be letters tucked in somewhere! From what I’ve overheard, Miss Sallie must have had a lover fifty or sixty years ago, who went away, and as no one ever knew why, her friends’ children are still curious about the matter.”