In another corner of the attic, up among the rafters, was a box apparently filled with old newspapers. Miss Hitty reached down among the newspapers with accustomed fingers and drew out a crumpled wad, tightly wedged into one corner of the box.
She listened carefully at the door, but there was no step in the house. She was absolutely alone. None the less, she bolted the door of the attic before she picked the crumpled paper apart, and took out the key of the trunk.
The old lock opened readily, and from the trunk came the musty odour of long-dead lavender and rosemary, lemon verbena and rose geranium. On top was Barbara Lee's wedding gown. Miss Hitty always handled it with reverence not unmixed with awe, never having had a wedding gown herself.
Underneath were the baby clothes which the girl-wife had begun to make when she first knew of her child's coming. The cloth was none too fine and the little garments were awkwardly cut and badly sewn, but every stitch had been guided by a great love.
Araminta's first shoes were there, too—soft, formless things of discoloured white kid. Folded in a yellowed paper was a tiny, golden curl, snipped secretly, and marked on the outside: "Minty's hair." Farther down in the trunk were the few relics of Miss Mehitable's far-away girlhood.
A dog-eared primer, a string of bright buttons, a broken slate, a ragged, disreputable doll, and a few blown birds' eggs carefully packed away in a small box of cotton—these were her treasures. There was an old autograph album with a gay blue cover which the years in the trunk had not served to fade. Far down in the trunk was a package which Miss Mehitable took out reverently. It was large and flat and tied with heavy string in hard knots. She untied the knots patiently—her mother had taught her never to cut a string.
Underneath was more paper, and more string. It took her half an hour to bring to light the inmost contents of the package, bound in layer after layer of fine muslin, but not tied. She unrolled the yellowed cloth carefully, for it was very frail. At last she took out a photograph—Anthony Dexter at three-and-twenty—and gazed at it long.
On one page of her autograph album was written an old rhyme. The ink had faded so that it was scarcely legible, but Miss Hitty knew it by heart:
"'If you love me as I love you
No knife can cut our love in two.'
Your sincere friend,
ANTHONY DEXTER."
Like a tiny sprig of lavender taken from a bush which has never bloomed, this bit of romance lay far back in the secret places of her life. She had a knot of blue ribbon which Anthony Dexter had once given her, a lead pencil which he had gallantly sharpened, and which she had never used.