I don't suppose that any of us will ever forget Miss Grantley's pretty parlour. It was a pattern of neatness and freshness, with its green silk curtains just shading the French window which was opened to the soft July air bearing the scent of the roses and jessamine; its low easy-chairs, of various patterns, its oval table with a cover of white and gold, its neat cabinet piano, the pretty dainty chimney ornaments, the few cool light sketches in water-colour that adorned the walls, the small book-case with a few charmingly bound volumes which filled up one recess by the fireplace, and the china closet that occupied the other. The contents of this china closet were always interesting to us, for they consisted of some rare specimens of porcelain, old Chelsea, and other exquisite ware, including the delicate tea-service which was brought out on high days and holidays, and was in daily use during the memorable week that we had devoted to the fancy fair.
One might go on gossiping about some of the "belongings" of this room, and the old china and the quaint handsome tea equipage, but that this is only a kind of introduction to our governess, or rather to the stories she told us out of school during that working holiday. It was on the Monday evening, after we had come in from the orchard and had finished tea, one toothsome accompaniment to which was some delectable apricot jam upon crisp toast, that Annie Bowers, who had been so quiet that she might have been asleep, said in her usual deliberate way: "Miss Grantley, that lovely silver cup (or shall I call it a vase?) fascinates me more every time I look at it, and I shall never be contented till you let me make a sketch of it; but the worst of it is there is no way of making a drawing that will show all the gleam and shadow that plays upon old silver."
"Dear me, how very poetical we are!" said Sarah Jorring interrupting.
"Not at all," said Annie in the same sleepy voice. "Anybody with an eye can see how beautiful that is. There is something regal in the ornament of it. The slender stem seems to grow as it expands into the bowl, the chasing is so simple and yet so firm and grand, the handles are like curves of the lip of the cup itself, as though they were a part of the whole design, and not as though they were stuck on as they would be in modern works. I could fancy it the wine-cup of a king or an emperor."
We had none of us seen this handsome goblet before, as it was usually locked up with other silver in a chest that stood in a wardrobe closet in Miss Grantley's bed-room. The fact is, we were all looking at it with some curiosity, for it had been brought down with the tea-spoons and sugar-tongs, and now stood on the table filled with pounded sugar for the strawberries that were to be eaten by and by.
"Is it an heirloom, Miss Grantley?" asked Marian Cooper. "Has it always belonged to you, and did some ancestor leave you the history of it?"
"Well, it has been in our family—in my mother's family—for perhaps two centuries," replied our governess with her grave gentle smile.
"You know that my mother, or at all events my great grandmother, belonged to the Huguenots, those French Protestants, many of whom escaped from the persecutions in France and came to England, where they worked at many trades. A number of these émigrés, as they were called, settled in a neighbourhood close to the city of London; a place called Saint Mary Spital. The part that they lived in was named the Spital Fields, and there they set up in business as weavers of silk. This cup came to my dear mother as a part of the old property that belonged to her grandmother, and it had been brought from the south of France, from the district where the persecution was carried on longest till the French revolution changed everything. The 'Reign of Terror,' as it was called, brought a terrible punishment to those who had themselves shown no mercy; and another kind of persecution to those who, rather than deny their religion, had endured the cruelties of a fierce soldiery. They had seen houses burned, even women and children tortured and killed, property destroyed, and existence made so hard and sorrowful that they ceased to fear death, and fought on with desperate courage, or abandoned the country that their tyrants had turned into a desert, and carried their arts and manufactures to other lands where they might meet and pray in peace."
"Miss Grantley," said Sarah Jorring when tea was over, and our governess had "washed up" the dainty cups and saucers, "we don't want you to read to us to-night, I think. You are to tell us a story instead, you know, and it seems that there ought to be a history belonging to the Silver Goblet."
"Yes, yes," we all cried out, "surely you know ever so much about it, and if it's not a family secret, or if you don't wish to tell us"—