"Louise? Maybe that's Louise Andrews—she was a Gwynne, you know," said Mrs. Lawrence frowning in an effort of recollection. "I can't think of any other Louise. Is there a picture of her? She was a great beauty."
"Did you ever see her, Cousin Charlotte?"
"Goodness, no, she's been dead I don't know how long."
"I remember her," said Miss Vardaman. "I'm so much older than any of you. She married Leonard Andrews, she didn't live very long. Yes, she was very pretty. That's John's picture. Yes, I suppose it does look funny, but that's the way they all dressed, you know, in those days. They were engaged and then they quarrelled about something—oh, dear me, it's years and years ago."
"You'd better take that picture, Miss Clara," said Mrs. Horace Gwynne briskly. "Maybe Doctor Vardaman would like to have it, and—oh, I was going to speak to you about something. You know I'm managing everything and it's an awful responsibility; I've counted all the towels and sheets and measured all the pieces of goods I've found—nothing ought to be wasted or thrown away, you know. There're a whole lot of medicine-bottles upstairs, over three hundred—do you think the doctor could use them? They're very good bottles, you know, no corks of course—I thought maybe the doctor——"
"John wouldn't have any use for them, I thank you, Jennie," said Miss Clara, stiffening.
Gwynne's eyes met mine. "The wistaria on the dining-room porch is going to bloom, don't you want to see it?" said he, biting his lips.
We retreated to the wistaria, and both of us, propped against the dining-room wall, gave away to hysterical laughter, all the more violent because we must smother it. Gwynne's nerves, I think, were a little unstrung by all he had been through the last melancholy week. "I—I can't help it——" he gasped. "I know it's all wrong, but I can't help it. They're so funny!"
We were presently visited with retribution for our ungodly merriment; for, as we stood there, an Armenian—or Bulgarian—gentleman came around the corner of the house with a wheelbarrow heaped with the spoil of the garret, and after him another bearing on his shoulders our old hair-trunk. Hardly any hair was left upon it, now; but there it was long and low and round-topped with rows of brass nails black with verdigris. It was going away on the Armenian shoulders—going out of our lives forever like those childish days. Gwynne looked at me with a rather tremulous smile.
"'Ha, Saint Edward! Ha, Saint George!' exclaimed the Black Knight, cutting down a man at each invocation," he quoted. "Don't, Mary!" For I am ashamed to say that I sat down on the top step and cried openly, while the boy tried to comfort me.