"I don't want them," he replied carelessly.
"I shall keep them, then. There is her wardrobe also. I believe she had nephews and nieces and cousins in her native village in India. All her possessions shall be sent out to them. Meanwhile, there is a little packet of things which she tied up a great many years ago, and has kept ever since. The sight of them caused me a strange shock. I thought they had been long destroyed. They revived my memories of a day—an event—certain days—when you were an infant."
"What things are these, then?"
"They were your own things—some of the things which you wore when you were a child in arms, not more than a few months old."
"Oh, they are not very interesting, are they?"
"Perhaps not." Lady Woodroffe had in her lap a small packet tied up in a towel or a serviette. She placed it on the table. "Humphrey, I always think, when I look at old things, of the stories they might tell, if they could, of the histories and the changes which might have happened."
"Well, I don't know, mother. I am very well contented with things as they are, though they might have given my father a peerage. As for thinking of what they might have been, why, I might, perhaps, have been born in a gutter."
"You might, Humphrey"—the widow laughed, which was an unwonted thing in her—"you certainly might. And you cannot imagine what you would be now, had you been born in a gutter."
"What's the good of asking, then?"
"Look at this bundle of your things."