Mrs. Grahame fitted a key to one of the larger drawers, and opened it. A faint perfume floated out, old roses and lavender, laid away one knows not how many years. Under folds of silver paper lay some damask towels, fine and thick and smooth, but yellow with age. They were tied with a lilac ribbon, and on the ribbon was pinned a piece of paper, covered with writing in a fine, cramped hand.
"Lift them out carefully, dear," said Mrs. Grahame, "and read the label."
Hildegarde complied, and read aloud: "These towels were spun and woven by my grandmother Grahame in Scotland, before she came to this country. Her maiden name was Annot McIntosh."
"What beautiful linen!" said Mrs. Grahame, smoothing the glossy folds with the hand of a housewife. "I always wished I had learned to spin and weave. Linen that one buys has no feeling in it. Lay it back reverently, degenerate daughter of the nineteenth century, and your degenerate mother will open another drawer."
The next drawer contained several sets of baby-clothes, at sight of which Hildegarde opened her eyes very wide indeed. Her mother was an exquisite needle-woman, so was her cousin Wealthy Bond, and she herself had no need to be ashamed of the "fine seam" she could sew; but never had she seen such needlework as this: tiny caps, wrought so thick with flower and leaf that no spot of the plain linen could be seen; robes of finest lawn, with wonderful embroidered fronts; shawls of silk flannel, with deep borders of heavy "laid work." One robe was so beautiful that both Hildegarde and her mother cried over it, and took it up to examine it more carefully. On the breast was pinned a piece of paper, with an inscription in the same delicate hand: "Hester's christening-robe. We think it was in consequence of this fine work that our dear mother lost her eyesight."
"I should think it highly probable," said Mrs. Grahame, laying the exquisite monument of folly back in the drawer. "I did not know that old Madam Aytoun was blind. What is written on that tiny cap, in the corner there? It must be a doll's cap; no baby could be so small."
Hildegarde read the inscription: "Worn by our uncle Hesketh, who weighed two pounds at birth. He grew to be six feet and six inches in height, and weighed three hundred pounds."
"What a wonderful person Miss Agatha must have been!" said Hildegarde. "Who else would think of all these pleasant bits of information? And now for the next drawer!"
She opened it, and gave a little shriek of delight. Here truly were beautiful things, such as neither she nor her mother had ever seen before: three short aprons of white silk, trimmed with deep gold lace, and covered with silk-embroidered flowers of richest hues, one with tulips, another with roses, a third with carnations. Folds of tissue paper separated them from each other, and the legend told that they had been worn by "our great-grandmother Ponsonby, when she was Maid of Honour to Queen Caroline. She was an Englishwoman."
Then came a tippet of white marabou feathers, buttoned into a silk case, and smelling faintly of camphor; a gown of rose-coloured satin, brocaded with green, and one of ruby-coloured velvet, which bore the inscription: "This was the gown on which our great-grandmother Ponsonby wore the diamond buttons which have since been divided among her descendants. A sinful waste of money which might have been put to good purpose."