She pointed with her knitting-pin to a fat-cheeked child, with a great shock of hair and no clothes to speak of, than which anything less resembling the stately delicacy and dignity of that aristocratic old lady could not possibly be conceived.
“But I have another,” said she, laying down her work and taking off her spectacles. “I have long been intending to show it to you, my dear, and also some other things that I hope will be yours some day.”
With which she went to an ancient Indian cabinet, unlocked it, and, pointing to a modern Chubb safe, wedged into a place that had evidently been cleared for it out of a labyrinth of tiny shelves, drawers, and cupboards, asked me to be good enough to carry it to a table for her. I did so, in great curiosity, and she drew up her chair before it.
“Lock the door, Kitty, and then come and sit by me,” she said with an air of solemn preparation that quite awed me. This done (though we were quite alone in that part of the house), we sat down to our investigations.
First she took out a tray of many compartments, which was covered with a thick layer of cotton wool; then another similar tray, then a third; and this she began to uncover at one corner.
“Here is the miniature,” she said, drawing it out. “Now, Kitty, if you do marry Tom, and these become yours, I should be much obliged to you if you would keep this just as it is, and instruct your eldest son to do so also. The others you can reset as you please. You don’t mind promising me that?”
“Oh, of course not, Mrs. Smith,—whatever you wish,” I stammered earnestly, with the reddest red face I ever had in my life, as I took the jewel from her. It was a jewel, indeed. The miniature, which was done on ivory, with the finish of a mediæval missal painting, was of a lovely, smiling, fair-haired girl—one of the sweetest little pictures I ever looked upon; but I hardly could look at it, for the ring of great diamonds in which it was framed, which positively made my eyes ache.
“Oh-oh!” I cried out in ecstasy. “Was there ever such a locket!”
“Plenty, my dear,” the old lady replied carelessly, “only you have not been in the way to see them. But these stones are much finer than most, certainly. I don’t suppose you will see much better ones when you go into society.”
I looked and looked, and sighed, and looked again, perfectly fascinated by this blazing splendour, and all the curious workmanship about it, until she took it from my hand and laid it back in its nest.