ised to go out and see some friends of mine this afternoon,"
said May. "So I'll leave them to you because they aren't tiring."

"All right, dear."

After dinner when her sister had gone out and Jenny, except for the
servant, was alone in the old house, she began to sort her mother's
relics. One after another they were put away in a big trunk still
plentifully plastered with railway labels of Clacton G.E.R. and
Liverpool Street, varied occasionally by records of Great Yarmouth.
Steadily the contents of the box neared the top with ordered layers of
silk dresses and mantles. Hidden carefully in their folds were old
prayer books and thimbles, ostrich plumes and lace. Jenny debated for a
moment whether to bury an old wax doll with colorless face and fragile
baby-robes of lawn--a valuable old doll, the plaything in childhood of
the wife of Frederick Horner, the chemist.

"I suppose by rights Alfie or Edie ought to have that," Jenny thought.
"But it's too old for kids to knock about. If they remember about it,
they can have it."

So the old doll was relegated to a lavendered tomb. "After all," thought
Jenny, "we wasn't even allowed to play with it. Only just hold it gently
for a Sunday treat."

Next a pile of old housekeeping books figured all over in her mother's
neat thin handwriting were tied round with a bit of blue ribbon and put
away. Then came the problem of certain pieces of china which Mrs.
Raeburn when alive had cherished. Now that she was dead Jenny felt they
should be put away with other treasures. These ornaments were vital with
the pride of possession in which her mother had enshrined them and
should not be liable to the humiliation of careless treatment.

At last only the contents of the desk remained, and Jenny thought it
would be right to look carefully through these that nothing which her
mother would have wished to be destroyed should be preserved for
impertinent curiosity. The desk smelt strongly of the cedar-wood with
which it was lined, and the perfume was powerfully evocative of the
emotions of childish inquisitiveness and awe which it had once always
provoked. Here were the crackling letters of the old Miss Horners, and
for the first time Jenny read the full history of her proposed adoption.
"Good job that idea got crushed," she thought, appalled by the profusion
of religious sentiment and half annoyed by their austere prophecies and
savage commentaries upon the baby Jenny. In addition to these le