"When you are through with your tasks, Reliance, you can take Edna out and show her the chickens and pigs and things," said grandma.
"Reliance is quite a recent addition to the family, isn't she?" said Mrs. Conway when the little maid went out.
"Yes," Mrs. Willis replied. "Amanda isn't as young as she was and we thought it would be a good thing to have someone here who could save her steps and who could be trained to take her place after a while. I think Reliance promises to be very capable in time."
While her mother talked to the grandparents, Edna walked softly around the room looking at the different things, the pictures, books and ornaments. There was a high mantel upon which stood a pair of Dresden vases and two quaint little figures. In the middle was a china house with a red door and vines over the windows. Edna had always admired it and was glad to see it still there. She stood looking at it for a long time. She liked to have her grandmother tell her its history. "That was brought to me by my grandfather when he returned from England," Mrs. Willis always said. "I was a little girl about six years old. Later he brought me those two China figures. He was a naval officer and that is his portrait you see hanging on the wall."
"I love the little house," remarked Edna, knowing that the next word would be: "You may play with it if you are very careful. It is one of my oldest treasures and I should be very grieved if it were broken."
The little house was then handed down and Edna examined it carefully. "It is so very pretty," she said, "that I should like to live in it. I would like to live in a house with a bright red door."
"I used to think that same thing when I was a little girl," her grandmother told her.
"I think maybe you'd better put it back so I won't break it," said Edna, carefully handing the treasure to her grandmother, "and then will you please tell me about the pictures?"
"The one over the mantel is called 'The Signing of the Declaration of Independence,' and that small framed affair by the chimney is a key to it, for it tells the names of the different men who figure in the picture."
"I will look at it some day and see if I can find out which is which," said Edna. "That is Napoleon Bonaparte over there; I know him."