"You won't have much to work on."
But a surprise was in store for Claire. In Mrs. Robson's room there had stood for years a huge black trunk concealed under a discarded portière. Claire had guessed that it was full of relics and memories of the Carrol family's former grandeur, but she had never felt the slightest interest in exploring these melancholy fragments of other days. But it proved otherwise. There were memories, plenty of them, but they had to do with the touching struggle of a mother who had provided against the day of what she felt to be her daughter's greatest need. The trunk was full of every conceivable material that a bride would find necessary for a brave showing—yards of silk, bolts of linen, quantities of lace.
"I didn't want my daughter to be a make-over bride," Mrs. Robson explained to Miss Proll, who stood by Claire as she threw up the trunk's heavy lid. "I wanted her to have everything fresh and new ... except perhaps my wedding-dress."
Claire, blinded by tears, drew out the heavy white-satin gown, slightly yellowed by the years. She held it up.
"What do you think?" Mrs. Robson continued to drawl, thickly. "I'm afraid it won't do. They dress differently now ... fluffy, light things. I guess...."
But Claire had silenced her with a kiss. Miss Proll's cheeks were glowing with vicarious nuptial excitement as she lifted the corded-satin skirt in her capable fingers and said:
"Oh, you won't know this when I get through with it!"
There was the veil Mrs. Robson had worn, too, and the artificial orange-blossoms, hoarded carefully in tissue-paper, even the thick, white kid gloves of a bygone day.
"But mother ... all these other things ... how ever did you manage?"
Mrs. Robson smiled and shook her head. She was in no mood for explanations; she was standing before the altar of all her sacrifices, and it was glowing with the light of fulfilment.