"Our—winter—coats," panted Wythie, very warm and short-breathed.
"Honestly?" cried Rob, joyfully. "I thought Aunt Azraella had given you her old curtains."
"So she has, and they are our winter coats," said Oswyth, preparing to take her bundle into the house, but Rob forestalled her by seizing the twine, and she carried the treasure, bumping against her knees, to their mother.
Mrs. Grey laughed over Wythie's project, but pronounced it feasible. "You will have to let me dye them black, girlies," she said. "I would never risk all those faded stripes coming out one shade of a color. But we'll make the lining red—defects won't show there—so they shall not be sombre. I think I have some fur in the Golconda which will go around the necks, and make them really sumptuous."
"The Golconda" was the chest in which Mrs. Grey stored her remnants of better days, and which was to the girls a mine of richness, furnishing them with their few luxuries of toilet.
The kettle and the witch-stick came forth, and the kettle boiled and bubbled, and Mrs. Grey toiled and troubled to good purpose, for the handsome material of the old curtains came out a beautiful glossy black.
Mrs. Grey cut and basted, and Wythie stitched the new coats with feverish impatience for the result, and Aunt Azraella came over to see the trying on.
"Really, Mary," she said, moved almost to enthusiasm as their mother revolved Wythie and Rob by their shoulders, displaying a success exceeding her own hopes, while making chalk notes of improvements—"really, Mary, you are wonderful! You might be a tailor. It is marvellous, brought up as you were."
"My bringing up explains it, Azraella. Mother believed in teaching her children to use their hands and wits. I'll tell you, Azraella; it's that Plymouth strain you so venerate. The Pilgrim mothers wove and spun, and my tailoring must be a case of pure heredity," said Mrs. Grey, laughing with a girlish mischievousness that rarely found expression. Wythie and Rob were just beginning to be old enough to realize that their mother was young.