The centennial was to be held the tenth day of August, and there was necessarily quick work.  The whole village was in an uproar; none of us who had old-fashioned possessions fairly knew where we were living, so many of them were in the Shaw house; we were short of dishes and bureau drawers, and counterpanes and curtains.  Mrs. Jameson never asked for any of these things; she simply took them as by right of war, and nobody gainsaid her, not even Flora Clark.  However, poor Emily Shaw was the one who displayed the greatest meekness under provocation.  The whole affair must have seemed revolutionary to her.  She was a quiet, delicate little woman, no longer young.  She did not go out much, not even to the sewing circle or the literary society, and seemed as fond of her home as an animal of its shell—­as if it were a part of her.  Old as her house was, she had it fitted up in a modern, and, to our village ideas, a very pretty fashion.  Emily was quite well-to-do.  There were nice tapestry carpets on all the downstairs floors, lace curtains at the windows, and furniture covered with red velvet in the parlor.  She had also had the old fireplaces covered up and marble slabs set.  There was handsome carved black walnut furniture in the chambers; and taken altogether, the old Shaw house was regarded as one of the best furnished in the village.  Mrs. Sim White said she didn’t know as she wondered that Emily didn’t like to go away from such nice things.

Now every one of these nice things was hustled out of sight to make room for the pieces of old-fashioned furniture.  The tapestry carpets were taken up and stowed away in the garrets, the lace curtains were pulled down.  In their stead were the old sanded bare floors and curtains of homespun linen trimmed with hand-knitted lace.  Emily’s nice Marseilles counterpanes were laid aside for the old blue-and-white ones which our grandmothers spun and wove, and her fine oil paintings gave way to old engravings of Webster death-bed scenes and portraits of the Presidents, and samplers.  Emily was left one room to herself—­a little back chamber over the kitchen—­and she took her meals at Flora Clark’s, next door.  She was obliged to do that, for her kitchen range had been taken down, and there was only the old fireplace furnished with kettles and crane to cook in.

“I suppose my forefathers used to get all their meals there,” said poor Emily Shaw, who has at all times a gentle, sad way of speaking, and then seemed on the verge of uncomplaining tears, “but I don’t quite feel competent to undertake it now.  It looks to me as if the kettles might be hard to lift.”  Emily glanced at her hands and wrists as she spoke.  Emily’s hands and arms are very small and bony, as she is in her general construction, though she is tall.

The little chamber which she inhabited during the preparation for the centennial was very hot in those midsummer days, and her face was always suffused with a damp pink when she came out of it; but she uttered no word of complaint, not even when they took down her marble slabs and exposed the yawning mouths of the old fireplaces again.  All she said was once in a deprecatory whisper to me, to the effect that she was a little sorry to have strangers see her house looking so, but she supposed it was interesting.