"When we reached my grandmother's I felt very reluctant to descend from my perch, and I said to my father that I wished he would take me about the town with him instead of leaving me there.
"He explained to me that it was impossible—he had all sorts of things to do, a magistrate's meeting to attend, and I don't know all what. Besides which he liked me to be with my grandmother, and he told me I was a silly little goose when I said I was afraid of her.
"My father entered the house without knocking—there was no need to lock doors in the quiet streets of the little old town, where everybody that passed up and down was known by everybody else, and their business often known better by the everybody else than by themselves. We went up to the drawing-room, there was nobody there—my father went out of the room and called up the staircase, 'Mother, where are you?'
"Then I heard my grandmother's voice in return.
"'My dear Hugh—is it you? I am so sorry. I cannot possibly come down. It is the third Tuesday of the month. My wardrobe day.'
"'And the little woman is here too. What shall I do with her?' said my father. He seemed to understand, though I did not, what 'wardrobe day' meant.
"'Bring her up here,' my grandmother called back. 'I shall soon have arranged all, and then I can take her downstairs again.'
"I was standing on the landing by my father by this time, and, far from loth to discover what my grandmother was about, I followed him upstairs. You have no idea, children, what a curious sight met me! My grandmother, who was a very little woman, was perched upon a high stool, hanging up on a great clothes-horse ever so many dresses, which she had evidently taken out of a wardrobe, close by, whose doors were wide open. There were several clothes-horses in the room, all more or less loaded with garments,—and oh, what queer, quaint garments some of them were! The clothes my grandmother herself had on—even those I was wearing—would seem curious enough to you if you could see them now,—but when I tell you that of those she was hanging out, many had belonged to her grandmother, and mother, and aunts, and great-aunts, you can fancy what a wonderful array there was. Her own wedding-dress was among them, and all the coloured silks and satins she had possessed before her widowhood. And more wonderful even than the dresses were a few, not very many, for indeed no room or wardrobe would have held very many, bonnets, or 'hats,' as I think they were then always called. Huge towering constructions, with feathers sticking straight up on the top, like the pictures of Cinderella's sisters in old-fashioned fairy-tale books—so enormous that any ordinary human head must have been lost in their depths."
"Did you ever try one on, grandmother?" said Molly.
Grandmother shook her head.