ght-for model? Not on the table where she saw it
yesterday; the table was blank, but for the chrysanthemums in a pot of
water in the middle. On the chimney-piece then, back in its place,
rather high up--there it was, to be sure! But such a disappointment! She
could have _seen_ it there, though it was rather out of reach for her
eyesight. But alas!--it was wrapped up again in that cloth. It was a
grievous disappointment.

Perhaps she might contrive to see a little behind it, by pulling it
aside. Yes--there!--she could _reach_ it, at any rate. But to pull it
aside was quite another matter. Its texture was prohibitive. Fancy a
strip of cocoanut matting, with an uncompromising selvage, wrapped round
a box of its own width, with its free end under the box! Then compare
the rigidity of beadwork and cocoanut matting. The position was
hopeless. It was quite beyond her strength to reach it down, and she
would have been afraid to do so in the most favourable circumstances
imaginable.

Quite hopeless! But there was one thing she might satisfy herself
of--the relative sizes of her own hand and the case. Yes--by just
standing on the secure steel fender to gain the requisite four inches,
she could lay her two hands over the top, length for length, and the
finger-tips would not meet, any more than hers met Phoebe's when their
frock-cuffs were flush with the edge of her father's old model, all
those years and years ago. Because her mind was striving to discredit
the authenticity of this one.

Slowly and cautiously, for rheumatism had its say in the matter, she got
a safe foothold on the fender and her hands up to the top, measuring.
See there! Exactly as she had foretold--half the size! She knew she
could not be mistaken about the frock-cuffs, and so far from the
finger-tips meeting, with the two middle fingers bickering a little
about their rights, there was an overlap as far as the second joint. The
hands had grown a little since those days, no doubt, but not to that
extent. She tried them both ways to make sure, left on right, and right
on left, lest she should be deceiving herself. She was quite unnerved
with self-mistrust, but so taken up with avoiding a mismeasurement now,
that she could not sift that question of the hands' growth.

Probably everyone has detected outrageous errors in his own answers to
his own question:--How old was I when this, that, or the other
happened?--errors always in the direction of exaggeration of a