Very delicately, he twirled the silver cover over his palm, as if it were a kind of sacred top too fine for human nature’s daily play. He flicked it lightly, connoisseur-fashion, with his handkerchief. For a second, he was almost sorry that the handkerchief, from its nature and uses, had to be so grimy. Then he heaved a sigh for beauty vanished. I have often thought that if Cousin Felix had gone into poetry instead of paint, he would have made good in that, too.
“Too bad there’s no bottom when there’s such a beautiful top! Say, Grammer, show us the drawing you made when you were little.”
Nothing loath, Grammer unlocked one of the small drawers of her cabinet, and took from it a packet of ancient letters. In the heart of the packet was a square of brownish paper, on which was traced a circle about six inches in diameter, with two projecting lacelike ears. One might call it a plan view of the bowl of the porringer. Little Lydia Fairlee had drawn it by the simple expedient of laying the object upside down on the paper, and pencilling around the outline. Evidently the pierced handles had attracted the child, for these had been drawn with great care. In the space beneath, she had done her own hand, by the same process. Many a time Felix had fitted his own five fingers over that symbol. Once his hand had been a rather good fit, but of late, it had been growing steadily beyond bounds.
“Yes, sir,” Madam Bradford was saying, “that’s the drawin’, and I can assure you I was well cuffed by Aunt Car’line for usin’ up her paper. Those days, folks didn’t throw paper araound, the way they do to-day. I suppose, ef I’d be’n a child these times, I’d ’a’ had Sattidy drawin’ lessons, and I hope I could ’a’ profited by ’em. But nobody ever gave me a chance at Pharaoh’s hosses.”
Felix grinned, guiltily.
“Anyways, your great-grandfather saved up that drawin’, pretty car’ful! We found it among his papers. And when I’m through, I shall leave it to you, along with the silver cover. You’re the one that loves lovely things.”
Felix was too well used to that reference, “when I’m through,” to feel it very deeply other than as a part of the porringer story. But he was an affectionate child, and there being no spectators, he gave his grandmother the kiss she wanted. Then he fitted the cover over the drawing, as he had often done before.
“And there was a picture of Lafayette on the side of the bottom part?”
Madam Bradford suddenly switched to her most modern style of speech. She often took a sly pleasure in disconcerting her hearers by making these lightning changes.
“An engraving is the correct term, I believe.” There was a world of prunes and prisms in her tone. “An engraving upon silver, executed in Paris. And underneath it was engraved, all in the French language, ‘Lafayette in Egypt.’ Your great-grandmother, who was quite a French scholar for those days, used to translate it for me. Very Frenchy writing it was, too; very Frenchy and flourishy. And in the picture, I mean the engraving, there was Lafayette on donkey-back, plain as anything, all wrapped up in a big cloak, and right alongside was a man, his body-servant, I expect, urging the donkey on. I can see it in my mind to this day. If I was a drawer, I could draw it for you.”