"You have your mother's eyes," he said. "I recollect her perfectly, though we only met two or three times, and that was seventeen—let me see—nearly eighteen years ago it must have been. Her hair, too, I should say," glancing at Cannie's chestnut mop; "it was very thick, I remember, and curled naturally."
"Aunt Myra always says that my hair is the same color as mother's," replied Candace.
"It is almost exactly the same. Do you remember her at all, Cannie?" asked Mrs. Gray.
"Just a little. I recollect things she used to wear, and where she used to sit, and one or two things she said. But perhaps I don't recollect them, but think I do because Aunt Myra told them to me."
"Is there no picture of her?"
"Only a tin-type, and it isn't very good. It's almost faded out; you can hardly see the face."
"What a pity!"
"Le dîner est servi, Madame," said the voice of Frederic at the door.
"We won't wait for the girls. They will be down in a moment," said Mrs. Gray, as she led the way to the dining-room. The sound of their feet on the staircase was heard as she spoke; and down they ran, the elder two in pretty dresses of thin white woollen stuff, which Candace in her unworldliness thought fine enough for a party.
People in North Tolland did not dine in the modern sense of the word. They took in supplies of food at stated intervals, very much as a locomotive stops for wood and water when it cannot go on any longer without such replenishment; but it was a matter of business and necessity to do so rather than of pleasure.