"Better keep on digging, then. Hope was in that box, remember? Maybe there's something great in this one, too."
"I'll never know," Portia said, shutting the clasps firmly, still shaking herself, and blowing at the little hairs of fur.
"Do you suppose Mrs. Brace-Gideon ever threw anything away?"
"I'm glad she didn't. I like finding things," Julian said. He was wearing a very old pith helmet that sat down on his ears like a soup tureen. Lacking panels to tap and quickly exhausting the safe-searching possibilities of the attic, he had been opening a box or two himself.
In the next trunk that Portia tackled there were many flannel bags with ribbon drawstrings, and each bag contained a pair of shoes or slippers: little pointy shoes with heels, buttoned ones, buckled ones, silk ones with bead-embroidered toes.
"Mrs. Brace-Gideon must have had very tiny feet for such a great big lady," Portia said thoughtfully, looking at the small frayed slipper in her hand.
"Jule?"
"M-m?... Yes?"
"Do you think it's really all right for us to do this? I mean, to go through all her very own things like this? I don't believe she'd like it if she knew ... do you?"
Julian considered.