"Peggy's sister," she said, "well, well, it's good to have Peggy bring her sister along—to play in the garret."
"This—this is Miss Farraday, Grandmother," Elizabeth said. "She—she isn't——"
"Elizabeth is trying to say that I am not a little girl, but I'm not really so very far from it. I'm not so grown up that I want to be sent out of the attic now I've just seen all these lovely things. You don't mind if I stay?"
"I'd mind if you didn't stay. You are the kind o' sight that sore eyes is aching for all the world over." The old woman and the girl smiled at each other as if they had been friends all their lives.
"First, tell me who this belonged to, Grandmummy," Peggy dragged at her sleeve imploringly, "and then tell me who every single dress here belonged to."
"Well, they belonged to a number of people, all told. Some of my wedding things is there. That rose lavender silk in your hand, Peggy, was the dress I appeared out to meeting in the Sunday after I was married. The blue silk with the black velvet ribbon scallops around the basque was the dress my sister Alviry wore to my wedding. She had long, pink ribbon streamers on her hat, a chip hat trimmed with pink roses, and she was a picture, I can tell you. My appearing-out hat is here somewhere—like Alviry's, only trimmed with little lavender plumes. I had a black silk trimmed with jet. That's it, that Elizabeth has her hand on. That's too old for me yet, but everybody had to have a black silk dress that was heavy enough to stand alone in those days."
"What's this little love of a pink muslin with all these tiny, tiny ruffles on it, Grandmother dear? See these bell-shaped white undersleeves, and this figured pink sash, Peggy. Wouldn't your sister look a dream in it?"
"That was the dress I wore when I give your grandfather my promise. I liked it better than any dress I ever had."
"I should think you would have," Peggy put in, fervently.
"I should have liked it best if your grandfather had never been born in the world. Leastways, that's what I've always said. It was the first dress my mother ever let me have all the say about. Dresses had to be chose for their wearing qualities when I was a girl. If they wouldn't wash and turn, year out and year in, we warn't allowed to have 'em, but I had set my heart on a pink muslin with dolman undersleeves, and after I went and nursed Grandmother White through scarlet fever, and just barely lived after I caught it myself, Mother said I could have anything I wanted as a present to get well on. Land, I begun to improve from the day that dress was promised me."