Ab's mother
came running lightly from the river bank toward where the youngster lay.
She was worthy of attention as she ran, and this is but a bungling
attempt at a description of her and of her dress.
It should be explained here, with much care and caution, that the mother
of Ab moved in the best and most exclusive circles of the time. She
belonged to the aristocracy and, it may be added, regarding this fine
lady personally, that she had the weakness of paying much attention to
her dress. She was what might properly be called a leader of society,
though society was at the time somewhat attenuated, families living,
generally, some miles apart, and various obstacles, chiefly in the form
of large, man-eating animals, complicating the matter of paying calls. As
for the calls themselves, they were nearly as often aggressive as social,
and there is a certain degree of difference between the vicious use of a
flint ax and the leaving of a card with a bending lackey. But all this
doesn't matter. The mother of Ab belonged to the very cream of the cream,
and was dressed accordingly. Her garb was elegant but simple; it had,
first, the one great merit, that it could easily be put on or taken off.
It was sustained with but a single knot, a bow-knot--they had learned to
make a bow-knot and other knots in the stone age, for, because of the
manual requirements for living, they were cleverer fumblers with their
fingers than we are now--and the lady here described had tied her knot in
a manner not to be excelled by any other woman in all the fiercely
beast-ranged countryside.
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