A few days before Christmas Polly arrived at the manor early in the morning and announced herself possessed of an inspiration.
“Why not have a fancy-dress party——”
“There’s no time.” Gita and Elsie protested in chorus.
“Yes, there is if all those cedar chests in the attic are full of old duds. Modern gowns in this old hall would look horrid and the men even worse. There must be stacks if this old manor runs true to form. They never sold things in those days and of course they were too good to pass on to the servants.”
The three raced one another up to the attic. The chests were locked, and as even Topper could not produce the keys, the gardener was sent for to pry them open. Then the carefully folded garments were shaken out and inspected. There was nothing more modern than the fashions of the eighteen-nineties, for by that time, no doubt, the Carteret ladies had begun to make over their fine clothes and wear them out. But anything later than 1830 was rejected with scorn. They sorted out gowns of taffeta and satin, mousseline-de-soie and velvet, in styles Pompadour, Empire, Watteau, and the Four Georges; tiny pointed waists, voluminous skirts, long trains and mere slips.
“We’ll have to powder our hair and wear corsets,” said Polly, “but we’ll set back a few centuries in that old hall, so who’ll mind a little discomfort?”
“Powdered bobbed hair will be a scream,” said Gita, who had been surveying her new possessions with dazzled eyes and hearing a ghostly patter of tiny feet along her nerves. “Why not wigs? One of the hair-dressers in Atlantic City could telephone for them.”
“Right. Leave it to me.”
Elsie, who had been investigating a chest, hitherto overlooked, lifted out a wedding-dress of heavy satin mellowed to old ivory and covered with priceless point-lace. “Did you ever see anything so lovely?” she gasped.
“I know who wore that!” cried Polly. “Your grandmother, Gita. I’ve seen it in an old album of granny’s, I remember—granny, who was one of her bridesmaids, got going about that wedding to mother one day and wondered why all that lace hadn’t been passed on to your aunt Evelyn when she married.”