the pearls

"Abbie, I want ye to have the pearls. I'm savin' the fan for Mary. Janet has the breast-pin, you know, and Belle the shawl. {...} And the pearls are fer you. Ye'll ne'er starve as long as ye have 'em." She opened the little hairy-skinned chest and took out a small velvet box and from it the pearls themselves. She twined them through her short stubby fingers, their creamy shimmers incongruous in the plump peasant hand.
{...}
There were tears in Abbie's brown eyes when she took them. {...} She held the pearls up to the wine-colored merino and looked in the small oblong glass.{...}Then she turned to her mother. Her face was flushed and tender. "Thank you Mother... so much,... I'll keep them always. But with the dark dress and the high neck,... I'll just not wear them tonight. After awhile when Will and I are wealthy, I'll wear them. And {...} maybe we'll have a daughter some day and she can wear them on her wedding night,... in white satin...and all the things that go with it..."
Abbie swept across the dingy loft room, {...} She knelt down by her mother's chair, {...}, and laid her head against the older woman's.

"And besides, Mother, you understand, don't you... when you follow your heart you don't need pearls to make you happy?"

-Excerpt from A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
(the {...}'s represent edits I made for brevity's sake)

{Pictures taken by me.}