There was a sound of altercation on the stairway that led directly out of the passage from the dining room of her new suite.
"You shall come upstairs, Grandmummy, and give it to her yourself. She doesn't want your present by way of me. She wants it handed out, with your own personal and private blessing. Besides, I've got a present for her myself. I can't give her two presents."
Peggy Farraday, with her hands sternly set on Grandmother Swift's shoulders, marched her firmly into Elizabeth's chamber.
"Here's Grandmummy with a beautiful present for your birthday. She was going to send it upstairs by me, but I declined the honour."
"Young folks like to open packages by themselves, without anybody standing around counting the Ohs and Ahs, and waiting to be thanked for something that may not exactly suit. If Elizabeth likes what I've made her, I guess she can make out to tell me so." Grandmother, entirely unruffled by the recent coercion to which she had been submitted, put down a bulky tissue-wrapped package and departed.
"Isn't she funny?" Peggy said. "But do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it. It's copied from one of mine, the only sweater I've ever really loved. And it's in your colour, and everything."
"'Do open it. I can hardly wait to see what you think of it.'"
Elizabeth, scarcely crediting her senses, shook out from the folds of tissue the lovely, fleecy garment of her dreams, a wool sweater in her own colour of "Heaven's blue." She gave it one comprehensive glance, then she slipped after her grandmother, caught up with her halfway down the stairs, and kissed her on the nape of an astonished neck.