"Don't get excited," said Jenny, petting her little sister. "Whatever I done or wherever I went, you should come along of me."
May, not to display emotion, said:
"Well, you needn't go sticking your great knee in my back." But Jenny knew by the quickness with which she fell asleep that May was happy and secure.
"I'm going to have a rare old rout out this morning," Jenny announced when she woke up to the sight of an apparently infinitely wet day, a drench in a gray monotone of sky from dawn to nightfall.
About eleven o'clock the rout out began and gradually the accumulated minor rubbish of a quarter of a century was stacked in various heaps all over the house.
"What about mother's things?" May inquired.
"I'm going to put them all away in a box. I'm going through them this afternoon," said Jenny.
"I've promised to go out and see some friends of mine this afternoon," said May. "So I'll leave them to you because they aren't tiring."
After dinner when her sister had gone out and Jenny, except for the servant, was alone in the old house, she began to sort her mother's relics. One after another they were put away in a big trunk still plentifully plastered with railway labels of Clacton G.E.R. and Liverpool Street, varied occasionally by records of Great Yarmouth. Steadily the contents of the box neared the top with ordered layers of silk dresses and mantles. Hidden carefully in their folds were old prayer books and thimbles, ostrich plumes and lace. Jenny debated for a moment whether to bury an old wax doll with colorless face and fragile baby-robes of lawn—a valuable old doll, the plaything in childhood of the wife of Frederick Horner, the chemist.