Stopping before a queer old whatnot, filled with bric-à-brac and shells, she caught up a round china box. A gilt eagle, hovering over a nest of little eaglets formed the lid, and her face began to dimple as she lifted the china bird by its imposing beak.
"There ought to be peppahmints inside," she said. "There always used to be, because I'd howl if there wasn't, and they couldn't beah to have me disappointed. Well, I wish you'd look! Deah old Aunt Alicia! She's remembahed all these yeahs and kept it ready for me."
She held the box out towards him, and he saw that it had been freshly filled with delectable little striped drops.
"It hurts my conscience," she said, looking up wistfully, as the familiar odour of the peppermint greeted her, "to think how I have neglected her. Heah I have been going to picnics and pahties and all sawts of things evah since I came home from school, and have nevah been neah her. I'm going to find her this minute, and not wait for her to come down as if I were some strangah."
The quaintly furnished old room straightway lost its charm for Leland when she left it, but Gay, pushing aside her veil to taste the contents of the eagle's nest, which Lloyd had deposited in her lap, scrutinized everything with interest. This was Alex's home now, and she wondered how he would look in the midst of such surroundings. She couldn't imagine him with such an antiquated background. Miss Marks picked up a basket of daguerreotypes from the marble-topped table, and began examining them.
They could hear Lloyd calling at the top of the stairs, "Aunt Alicia," and then Mrs. Shelby's voice, tremulous with pleased surprise: "Why it's the Little Colonel! Oh, my dear! My dear! what a joy it is to have you here again!" Then they heard Lloyd laughingly explaining their mission, and after that they seemed to pass into another room, for a low hum of voices was all that could be distinguished.
Presently Mrs. Shelby came down alone. She was a gentle little old lady, with faded blue eyes, and a sweet patient face. She wore a bunch of gray curls over each ear in the fashion of her girlhood. There was a lingering charm of youth about her, just as there was a faint suggestion of lavender still clinging to the fine old lace that fell over her little hands. Almost as soon as she had finished welcoming them an old coloured man followed her into the room, bearing a huge tray with tinkling glasses, a decanter of raspberry shrub, and a plate of little nut-cakes. While he served the guests she explained Lloyd's delay with almost girlish eagerness.
"I have taken a great liberty with your model, Miss Marks, but Lloyd assured me you would be perfectly willing. This last day of June is a very happy anniversary of mine and the doctor's. I have been thinking of it all morning, and when Lloyd came up the stairs just now, so glowing and bright, it seemed to me I saw my own lost youth rising up before me, and I asked her to put on a gown I have treasured many years, and be photographed in that.
"It is the one I had on when Richard proposed to me," she explained, a faint pink tingeing her soft old cheeks. "Fifty years ago to-day, in that same old garden. This was my grandmother's place then. Richard bought it afterwards. And a year from to-day if we live, we will keep our golden wedding. If you can use the gown in the photograph it will make me very happy, for it is falling to pieces, despite my care of it. Lloyd thought it very picturesque and appropriate."