“No, I’ve seen him. Drives a queer old rattle-trap in the Park when he might have his carriage, they say. I’ve met Mrs. Pledger, who would have given me the family history if I’d had time to listen,” Alex. said, with a thought of the girl whom Mrs. Pledger called Sherry, and who was now standing by him with his coffee, her hand shaking so that a part of it was spilled in the saucer.
Alex. did not care for the spilled coffee. His thoughts were on the Pledgers, or rather the girl, and he wondered if Charley had ever seen or heard of her. He would finesse and find out, and he said:
“These Pledgers have no children, I believe, or young people, who would like the chest?”
“None that I know of,” Charley answered. “I’ve not the pleasure of Mrs. Pledger’s acquaintance. I was in the house once to see Joel, but she was gone; regular old crow’s-nest, and a maid who hollered up the stairs, ‘Mr. Pledger, here’s a gentleman come to see you in a carriage.’ I did hear, though, a rumor of a deuced pretty girl who visited them once. Maybe she is a Crosby, with a right to the chest.”
“By George! I never thought of that,” Alex. said to himself, beginning to feel unwilling to have the chest opened and its contents appropriated by strangers, and to wonder if he ought not to write to Mrs. Pledger and ask if the girl was a Crosby.
He never dreamed that she was there close to him, her face so white that his mother noticed her at last and asked if she were ill.
“Oh, no,” Sherry answered, pulling herself together and trying to seem natural, as she attended to her duties with her ears strained to catch every word of the conversation concerning the chest.
All the guests were talking of it now, saying they must have it opened and see what ladies wore sixty or seventy years ago. Alex.’s spirits had gone down with thoughts of the girl, but the pressure was so great that he agreed to see what they could do to-morrow, and with this the party left the dining-room.
The next morning was rainy, precluding any outdoor amusements, but just the time for an inspection of old Mrs. Crosby’s wardrobe, some of the young people said, as they gathered at the breakfast table. Sherry, who was at her post, was feeling wretchedly, and could scarcely keep on her feet. The night before, when no one saw her, she had gone to the attic and looked at the chest and tried to move it from the wall, thinking she might find the key, if it was still where Mrs. Pledger had said it was kept years ago. But it was heavy, and she had returned to her room with a feeling that she ought to prevent its contents from being desecrated by stranger hands. Her great-grandmother’s bridal dress was probably there, and Sherry tried to fancy her as she must have looked on that night of the great Crosby party. It was a long time before she could sleep, she was so excited about the chest and what she had heard of the Pledgers, and what Charley Reeves had said of the “deuced pretty girl” who had visited the “old crow’s nest,” where the maid “hollered up the stairs.” She was the girl, no doubt, but the compliment paid her was lost in the sting of the maid and the “crow’s nest,” and she tossed from side to side until at last she fell asleep and dreamed that her grandmother came to her clad in heavy brocade silk, with jewels in her ears and knots of old point lace on her sleeves and at her bosom and on the shoulders, and on her head a white bonnet with pink bows and wide ribbon strings.
“Come,” she had said, beckoning to Sherry, who went with her to the attic, where together they drew the chest a little from the wall, and her grandmother showed her the key to the padlock hanging on a tack which had been driven into the wood, just as Mrs. Pledger had said it was.