"I should not have been allowed to take such a liberty," she said. "I stood and stared about me in perfect amazement without speaking for a minute or two, till my grandmother got down from her stool, and my father told me to go to speak to her.
"'Are you going away, grandmother?' I said at last, my curiosity overcoming my shyness. 'Are these all your clothes? You will want a great many boxes to pack them in, and what queer ones some of them are!'
"'Queer, my dear,' said my grandmother. 'They are certainly not like what you get now-a-days, if that is what you mean by queer. See here, Nelly, this is your great-grandmother's wedding dress—white Padusoy embroidered in gold—why, child, it would stand alone! And this salmon-coloured satin, with the pea-green slip—will the stuffs they dye now keep their colour like that a hundred years hence?'
"'It's good strong stuff certainly,' said my father, touching it as he spoke. But then he went on to say to my grandmother that the days for such things were past. 'We don't want our clothes to last a century now, mother,' he said. 'Times are hurrying on faster, and we must make up our minds to go on with them and leave our old clothes behind. The world would get too full if everybody cherished bygone relics as you do.'
"I don't think she much liked his talking so. She shook her head and said something about revolutionary ideas, which I didn't understand. But my father only laughed; his mother and he were the best of friends, though he liked to tease her sometimes. I wandered about the room, peeping in among the rows of quaint costumes, and thinking to myself what fun it would be to dress up in them. But after a while I got tired, and I was hungry too, so I was very glad when grandmother, having hung out the last dress to air, said we must go down to dinner—my father had left some time before——"
"What did you have for dinner, grandmother?" said Sylvia. "It isn't that I care so much about eating," she added, blushing a little, "but I like to know exactly the sort of way people lived, you know."
"Only I wish you wouldn't interrupt grandmother," said Molly. "I'm so afraid it'll be bed-time before she finishes the story."
"Which isn't yet begun—eh, Molly?" said grandmother. "I warned you my stories were sadly deficient in beginning and end, and middle too—in short they are not stories at all."
"Never mind, they're very nice," said Molly; "and if I may sit up till this one's done I don't mind your telling Sylvia what you had for dinner, grandmother dear."
"Many thanks for your small majesty's gracious permission," said grandmother. "But as to what we had for dinner, I really can't say. Much the same as you have now, I fancy. Let me see—it was November—very likely a roast chicken and rice pudding."