Eddie ran to open it.
"Ah, I thought I should find you here, daughter," Mr. Dinsmore said, coming in. "I, too, want to see these things; it is long since I looked at them."
She gave him a pleased look and smile, and stepping to the closet he stood for some moments silently gazing upon its treasures.
"You do well to preserve them with care as mementoes of your mother," he remarked, coming back and seating himself by her side.
"O grandpa, you could tell us more about her, and dear mamma too, when she was a little girl!" said little Elsie, seating herself upon his knee, twining her arms about his neck, and looking coaxingly into his face.
"Ah, what a dear little girl your mamma was at your age!" he said, stroking her hair and gazing fondly first at her and then at her mother, "the very joy of my heart and delight of my eyes! though not dearer than she is now."
Elsie returned the loving glance and smile, while her namesake daughter remarked, "Mamma couldn't be nicer or sweeter than she is now; nobody could."
"No, no! no indeed!" chimed in the rest of the little flock. "But grandpa please tell the story. You never did tell it to us."
"No," he said, half sighing, "but you shall have it now." Then went on to relate how he had first met their mother's mother, then a very beautiful girl of fifteen.
An acquaintance took him to call upon a young lady friend of his, to whom Elsie Grayson was paying a visit, and the two were in the drawing-room together when the young men entered.