The morning passed pleasantly, and the sky, which had been rather grey and overcast early in the day, cleared up about noon and promised to be bright and sunny for the remaining hours.
So Mary felt quite light-hearted when, shortly after luncheon, Miss Verity sent her to get ready for their drive.
“Wrap yourself up warmly,” her godmother said. “It gets chilly in the afternoon—or stay—I have an idea,” and with a smile on her kind face Miss Verity went upstairs, and Mary heard her talking to Pleasance.
In a few minutes she came back, carrying something over her arm which looked to Mary as if her Cooies and all their numerous relations had helped to make it! It was a little cape—made, not of fur, but of tiny feathers, too soft and small to bristle or break, of every shade of bluey-grey, and lined with white, still quite clean, though the cape was evidently old, and the white had grown rather creamy-coloured through lying by for many years.
“It was mine when I was a little girl like you,” said her godmother. “It was considered my very best, and somehow it never got dirty or seemed to need cleaning, though some of the shades are very delicate, as you see. It will be just the thing for you to wear when you drive with me these chilly afternoons.”
Mary eyed the cloak with great interest and approval.
“It is lovely,” she said, “and wonderful I don’t think you could get one like it in any shop now, godmother, could you?”
Miss Verity shook her head.
“I doubt if you could,” she said. “And I do not even know if it came from a shop long ago. It was given to my mother for me when I was only a baby by some friend of her mother’s, and it came ‘from abroad,’ which was all I ever knew about it. But we must be quick, dear; Jackdaw and Magpie are not fond of waiting at the door.”
Nor were they; as Mary ran downstairs she heard their bells tinkling impatiently. And when she called out cheerfully—