But Dolly only clung closer and spoke no word, and they went to bed together.
[112]
]CHAPTER X
THE LAST CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND
In after days the last month spent in England seemed like a dream to the children. There was a fortnight during which packing-cases and new flat cabin-trunks came to the house, and were filled with a multitudinous collection of things. When all the stacks of garments, little and big, were ready, Mrs. Conway went in and out of the different rooms, the little girls at her heels, fingering an ornament here she felt she must take, a book there, looking with moist eyes at a picture that had looked down on her most of her life. Yet she did not wish to cumber herself with unnecessary luggage, so the selection had to be a small one. There were two tall silver candlesticks, snuffer-dish, and snuffers she could not leave behind.
“My mother gave them to me when I was married, and said I was to give them to my eldest daughter when she married,” she said, “for her mother had given them to her, and before that, her mother had given them to her.”
[113]
]“Oh, of course you must take them,” said Phyl, and felt added dignity that she had one of her wedding presents before her.
“The cake-basket is not quite so old; but that shall be for Dolly,” the mother said, and lifted up the silver basket Dolly had always admired ardently.
There were tears in Weenie’s voice.
“When I gets married,” she said, “what’s you got for me?”
Mrs. Conway found a cream-jug with a handsome handle.
“Did Dranma’s Dranma’s have it?” was Weenie’s critical question.