“My favorite is that part, ‘The moving moon went up the sky and nowhere did abide,’ ” said Doris, “and I guess I love the thing as much as you do.”
“And Miss Camilla,” added Sally, “says her favorite in it is,
“ ‘The selfsame moment I could pray,
And from my neck so free,
The Albatross fell off and sank
Like lead into the sea.’
She says that’s just the way she felt when we girls made that discovery about her brother’s letter. Her ‘Albatross’ had been the supposed weight of disgrace she had been carrying about all these fifty years.”
“Oh, Miss Camilla!” sighed Doris ecstatically. “What a darling she is! And what a wonderful, simply wonderful adventure we’ve had, Sally. Sometimes, when I think of it, it seems too incredible to believe. It’s like something you’d read of in a book and say it was probably exaggerated. Did I tell you that my grandfather has decided to purchase her whole collection of porcelains, and the antique jewelry, too?”
“No,” answered Sally, “but Miss Camilla told me. And I know how she hates to part with them. Even I will feel a little sorry when they’re gone. I’ve washed them and dusted them so often and Miss Camilla has told me so much about them. I’ve even learned how to know them by the strange little marks on the back of them. And I can tell English Spode from Old Worcester, and French Faience from Vincennes Sèvres,—and a lot beside. And what’s more, I’ve really come to admire and appreciate them. I never supposed I would.
“Miss Camilla will miss them a lot, for she’s been so happy with them since they were restored to her. But she says they’re as useless in her life now as a museum of mummies, and she needs the money for other things.”
“I suppose she will restore the main part of her house and live in it and be very happy and comfortable,” remarked Doris.
“That’s just where you are entirely mistaken,” answered Sally, with unexpected animation. “Don’t you know what she is going to do with it?”
“Why, no!” said Doris in surprise. “I hadn’t heard.”