VI
COUSIN DOVE
U
p in the attic of the Primrose house one day, I was helping Letitia with those family treasures which were too antiquated for future usage, but far too precious with memories to cast out utterly—discarded laces, broken fans, pencilled school-books, dolls and toys that had been Letitia's, the very cradle in which she had been rocked by the mother she could not remember, even the little home-made pieced and quilted coverlet they had tucked about her while she slept. She folded it, and I laid it carefully in a wooden box.
"How shall we fill it?" I asked her, gazing at the odds and ends about my feet.
"With these," she said, bringing me packages of old newspapers, each bundle tied neatly with a red ribbon, too new and bright ever to have been worn. I glanced carelessly at the foolish packages, as I thought them—then suddenly with a new interest.
"Why," I said, "they're papers from Bombay!"
"Yes," she answered.