o' David, bein' sung. I hadn't dreamed
she'd be like that--I hadn't dreamed it. Why, some folks, Christian an'
in a pew, never come to the part o' their lives where they want to go
back an' get a Big Lil, too.

"We stood there a little while, an' I talked to her some, though I
declare I couldn't tell you what I said. You can't--when the psalm
feelin' comes. But we stood out there sort o' occupyin' April, till
after the big blue bowl o' feathery eggs had been popped in the big
black oven, an' it was rill dark.

"I forgot all about the shroud till we stepped in the house an' lit up,
an' I see it. An' then it was like the song in me gettin' words, an' it
come to me what it all was: How it rilly hadn't been Jennie's funeral so
much as it had been 'Leven's--the 'Leven that was. But I didn't tell
her--I never told her. An' she wore that shroud for most two years,
mornin's, about her work."

Calliope smiled a little, with her way of coming back to the moment from
the four great horizons.

"Land," she said, "sometimes I think I'll make some shrouds an' starch
'em up rill good, an' take 'em to the City an' offer to folks. An' say:
Here. Die--die. You've got to, some part o' you, before you can awake
an' put on your beautiful garments an' your strength. I told you, you
know," she added, "I guess sometimes I kind o' believe in craziness!"

XVIII

IN THE WILDERNESS A CEDAR

In answer to my summons Liddy Ember appeared before me one morning and
outspread a Vienna book of coloured fashion-plates.

"Dressmakin' 'd be a real drudgery for me," she said, "if it wasn't for
havin' the colour plates an' makin' what I can to look like 'em.
Sometimes I get a collar or a cuff that seems almost like the picture.
There's always somethin' in the way of a cedar," she added blithely.

"A cedar?" I repeated.

She nodded, her plain face lighting. "That's what Calliope use' to call
'em," she explained; "'I will plant in the wilderness the cedar,' you
know--in the Bible." And I did recall the phrase on Calliope's lips, as
if it were the theme of her.

From this one and that one, and now and then from her herself, I had
heard something of Calliope's love story. Indeed, all Friendship knew it
and spoke of it with no possibility of gossip or speculation, but with a
kind of genius for consideration. I did not know, however, that it was
of this that Liddy meant to speak, for she began her story far afield,
with some talk of Oldmoxon ho