How dusty it was!
"I don't believe even Liddy knew it was up here," thought Dorry, "for the boys poked it out from away, 'way back under the rafters. If she had known of it, she would have put it with the rest of the trunks."
Dorry laid the dusty lid back carefully, noting, as she did so, that it was attached to the trunk by a strip of buff leather inside, extending its entire length, and that its buff-paper lining was gay with sprays of pink rose-buds. In one of the upper corners of the lid was a label bearing this inscription:
"Oh! it's Aunt Kate's own writing!" exclaimed Dorry, under her breath, as, still kneeling, she read the words.
"'From Papa,'" she repeated slowly,—"her Papa; that was Donald's and my Grandfather. And she wrote this in October, 1849—ten whole years before we were born! and when she was only a little girl herself!"
Then, with reverent hands Dorry lifted the top article—a soft, pink muslin dress, which had a narrow frill of yellowish lace, basted at the neck. It seemed to have been cast aside as partly worn out. Beneath this lay a small black silk apron, which had silk shoulder-straps, bordered with narrow black lace, and also little pockets trimmed with lace. Dorry, gently thrusting her hand into one of these pockets, drew forth a bit of crumpled ribbon, some fragments of dried rose-leaves, and a silver thimble marked "K. R." She put it on her thimble-finger; it fitted exactly.
"Oh dear!" thought Dorry, as, with flushed cheeks and quick-beating heart, she looked at the dress and apron on her lap, "I wish Don would come!" Then followed a suspicion that perhaps she ought to call him, and Uncle George too, before proceeding further; but the desire to go on was stronger. Aunt Kate was hers,—"my aunty, even more than Don's," she thought, "because he's a boy, and of course doesn't care so much;" and then she lifted a slim, white paper parcel, nearly as long as the trunk. It was partly wrapped in an old piece of white Canton crape, embroidered with white silk stars at regular intervals. Removing this, Dorry was about to take off the white paper wrapper also, when she caught sight of some words written on it in pencil.
"Dear Aunt Kate!" thought Dorry, intensely interested; "how carefully she wrapped up and marked everything! Just my way." And she read: