Skillful with her needle and thrifty in her purchases, the outfit when completed might have represented twice the outlay that Henry expended on it.  Then there were “showers,”—­linen, stocking, and even a tin one; gifts from her girl friends—­cup, face, bath and guest towels; all the tremendous trifles and addenda that go to gladden the chattel-loving heart of a woman.  A little secret society of her erstwhile school friends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with a silver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied an apartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a week with her, helping to piece out a really lovely tulip-design quilt of pink and white sateen.

“Jeanette,” said Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat in a frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, “how did you feel that time when you had the nerv—­the breakdown?”

Jeanette, pretty after a high-cheek-boned fashion and her still bright hair worn coronet fashion about her head, bit off a thread with sharp white teeth, only too eager to reminisce her ills.

“I was just about gone, that’s what I was.  Let anybody so much as look at me twice and, pop!  I’d want to cry about it.”

“And?”

“For six weeks I didn’t even have enough interest to ask after Truman, who was courting me then.  Oh, it was no fun, I can tell you, that nervous breakdown of mine!”

“What—­else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Did it—­was it—­was it ever hard to swallow, Jeanette?”

“To swallow?”

“Yes.  I mean—­did you ever dream or—­think—­or feel so frightened you couldn’t swallow?”

“I felt lots of ways, but that wasn’t one of them.  Swallow!  Who ever heard of not swallowing?”

“But didn’t you ever dream, Jeanette—­terrible things—­such terrible things—­and get to thinking and couldn’t stop yourself?  Silly, ghostly—­things.”

Jeanette put down her sewing.

“Ann, are you quizzing me about—­your mother?”

“My mother?  Why my mother?  Jeanette, what do you mean?  Why do you ask me a thing like that?  What has my mother got to do with it?  Jeanette!”

Conscious that she had erred, Jeanette veered carefully back.

“Why, nothing, only I remember mamma telling me when I was just a kiddie how your mamma used to—­to imagine all sorts of things just to pass the time away while she embroidered the loveliest pieces.  You’re like her, mamma used to say—­a handy little body.  Poor mamma, to think she had to be taken before Truman, junior, was born!  Ah me!”

That evening, before Fred came for his two hours with her in the little parlor, Ann, rid of her checked apron and her crisp pink frock saved from the grease of frying sparks, flew in from a ring at the doorbell with a good-sized special-delivery box from a silversmith, untying it with eager, fumbling fingers, her father laying aside his newspaper to venture three guesses as to its contents.