"O, Aunt Wealthy," she cried, "how can you trust such treasures to my keeping? Old fashioned indeed! They are all the more delightful for that, as showing that one does not belong to the mushroom gentry, but to a good, substantial old family. But you must not let me use them, lest they should be lost or stolen. I should be frightened out of my wits in either case."
"Nonsense, child! You would have no need; for the loss would be more yours than mine; I shall never wear them again, and they will all belong, some day, to you or your sisters," Miss Stanhope said, turning to her bureau once more.
Lifting out something carefully wrapped in a towel, she laid it in Mildred's lap, saying, "This, too, you must take with you. You will want a handsome wrap in Philadelphia, before you can go out to buy, and this will answer the purpose even better than anything you would feel able to purchase. Won't it?" she queried with another of her sweet, silvery laughs.
Mildred fairly caught her breath in delighted surprise.
"O, Aunt Wealthy! your beautiful India shawl! you can't mean to lend that to me!"
"That is just what I mean, Milly; stand up a minute, dear," she answered gayly, taking it from its wrappings and draping it about the slender girlish figure. "There! nothing could be more becoming. I can only lend, not give it, because it is already willed to your mother. But it is to descend always to the eldest daughter."
"Aunt Wealthy, I'm afraid to borrow it; afraid something might happen to it. So please put it away again."
"Tut, child! something might happen to it at home. Suppose the house should burn down with everything in it; wouldn't I be glad the shawl was saved by being far away in your keeping?"
It was very rich and costly, and highly prized by Miss Stanhope as the gift of a favorite brother, long since dead. He had been a wanderer, lived many years in China and India, whence he had sent her, from time to time, rare and beautiful things, of which this was one, then at length he came home to die in her arms, leaving her the bulk of his fortune, enough to make her very comfortable.