Lavinia Flint, the younger, very much younger sister of these two ladies, had run away from her home fifteen years ago to marry a dashing young soldier named Jack Lovell, and had sailed with him to India. A year or so later the Flint ladies heard from Mr. Lovell that his wife had died, leaving a tiny baby named Lavinia. He sent them no address, so they could not have answered his letter if they had wanted to. And they had no desire to answer it, for they looked upon their sister as lost to them from the day of her elopement, and they had no wish to see her husband or child.
The Flints were a hard-hearted, stiff-necked race, and if one of the family did wrong, the others felt no relenting mercy because of ties of blood.
And so when Lavinia went away, her pretty dresses and other girlish finery were packed away in the attic, and had lain there ever since.
She was so much younger than her sisters that they had petted her as a child, and had taken great pleasure in her girlish enjoyments. But when she left them, with only a note to say she had eloped with Jack Lovell, their hearts hardened, and they now rarely mentioned her, even to each other.
And so year after year the trunks of Lavinia’s clothing had been looked over and put in order, with no reference to their future disposition, until now Miss Priscilla concluded the time had come.
But when they shook out the old-fashioned gowns, the lovely taffetas and organdies and embroidered muslins did seem inappropriate to send to people who were suffering for plain, substantial clothing.
“Oh, my!” said Mrs. Dolan’s granddaughter, her eyes as big as saucers, as she looked at the beautiful show, “ain’t them just elegant! I wisht I was a fire-sufferer, or a freshet victim.”
“How well I remember Vinnie in that flowery frock,” said Miss Dorinda; “she looked like a spring blossom herself, she was so pretty and fresh.”
Miss Dorinda sighed; but Miss Priscilla shut her teeth together with a snap, and returned the dresses to their trunks and shut down the trunk-lids with a snap, and the cleaning of the attic went on again.
Except during an interval for luncheon, the workers worked all day, and at five o’clock the attic was cleaned, and the procession filed down-stairs again.