IDA’S DRAWERS

We now give some new patterns in linen, which have been sent out to us from Paris. As everybody is talking of economy, many ladies, who have heretofore put out their linen work, will now make it up for themselves. In this way every subscriber for “Peterson” will be able to save three, four, five, or even ten times the price of subscription.

—Peterson’s Magazine, November 1861

When Ida had jumped impulsively on the train in Baltimore, she had brought nothing with her but her shawl, the money belt sewn tightly around her rib cage and the tasseled bag attached to the high waistband of her dress. She had crocheted the “Lady’s Work-Bag” herself, but it was small, holding only a purse, a comb, a handkerchief, and a powder box with a swansdown puff. Thus she had nothing to wear in the city of Washington but the clothes on her back.

They were not enough. She must certainly have a change of underwear. Ida had discarded her stays long ago, but she surely needed another chemise and an extra pair of drawers.

Ida confided her problem to Mrs. Broad. At once that kind woman bundled a couple of old sheets out of a cupboard. “They’ve been side-to-middled already,” she said, “so they’re no use to me anymore.”

Ida accepted them gratefully, and begged the loan of scissors and pincushion, needle and thread. In a single long night she turned the sheets into a chemise, an enormous pair of drawers and a nightdress.

Next morning she heated a kettle on the stove and got to work in the backyard, using Annie’s scrubbing board and her cake of brown soap, then cranking everything between the rollers of the mangle. She washed out her bodice too, and her lace collar. Then, instead of pegging everything up on the line, she spread them out in her bedroom to dry. She didn’t want to take up space in the drying yard, because it was always like a ship in full sail. That night she went to sleep in her new nightdress, her wet things cooling the warm air.

When Mrs. Broad appeared at her door next morning with a length of upholsterer’s fringe, Ida laughed, because she knew what it was for. At once she reached for her purse and insisted on paying a few pennies, because Mrs. Broad had bought it from the ragman.

The fringe matched Ida’s skirt exactly, and she looped it twice around the lower edge to hide the muddy hem. The effect was perfectly in the mode, because the magazines were full of fashionable ladies in wide-spreading gowns trimmed at the bottom in the same way.

“Well now, ain’t you smart,” said Mrs. Tossit. “Just like a fashion plate.”

Of course it wasn’t true, but even in her swollen skirt, Ida felt almost elegant as she began her new quest. “There’s hospitals all over this town,” Mrs. Broad had said. So all over town Ida would go. She would visit them all, even though she had little faith in any of Lily’s lame stories. Hope was all she had left, the slim hope that she might find Seth somewhere, no matter what he was suffering from—a wound received in battle, a feverish inflammation of the lungs or an attack of yellow jaundice.