“‘Samuel Bings,’” said I. “What a funny name.”
“I see nothing funny about it,” she said. “Samuel Bings was a very distinguished and unfortunate man.”
“Oh, I should love to hear his story some time,” I said contritely.
“You shall,” said my grandmother relenting, “and when I have told it to you, you will be proud that the name of Bings appeared among your ancestry.”
Well, then, Carin, my little squirrel, we came to the opening of the chests. How shall I ever describe to you what was in them? I couldn’t—not in one letter nor three.
Shawls and dolmans, and great flounced skirts and lace petticoats and silken nubias, and beaded fascinators, and real lace and fans and slippers and silken stockings, and flowing undersleeves, and old gloves and hats and feathers, and embroidered lingerie and lace handkerchiefs and—Oh, mercy, Carin, everything a belle of long ago would wear. And a belle of to-day throw away. But, no, I must not be disrespectful to old lace and brocade, nor to China crepe and Irish poplin.
I tried on the old frocks and strutted and pranced around in them, and put on the queer, short gloves which were as freckled with mildew as Jim’s face. Of course I don’t mean that Jim is mildewed. Only that he is freckled.
I wore the shawls, and dropped preposterous curtsies in the flounced skirts, and I coquetted with my own venerable grandmother behind the cracked old fans, and did the plumes up in my hair.
“My dear,” said my grandmother at length, “you must have these interesting fabrics made over for you. Some slight alteration will be necessary I suppose, but on the whole they become you immensely. You look completely a Bryce in them.”
Just then Aunt Lorena came in. When she saw the litter in that room and myself in a flowered silk seven yards around the bottom of the skirt, and eighteen inches around the waist—I was almost smothered by this time—she dropped in a chair and turned white.
“Yes, Lorena,” said my grandmother with great dignity. “At last I have found someone who appreciates these rare things. They were offered to you as the wife of my only living son. You rejected them. You preferred to wear inferior fabrics and passing styles. But the styles in which these exquisite fabrics are made up, are historic, Lorena, historic. This however, is a point which you do not seem to appreciate. I therefore pass them on to my granddaughter—the daughter of my second son. You will see that they are adapted to her needs, tightened perhaps—”