ck in the
thatch for twenty years. He placed the black bottles neatly in rows on
an old box in the corner, and piled the skins on one another, and sorted
the rubbish in all the boxes; and at eleven o'clock his work was almost
done. He seated himself on the packing-case which had once held Waldo's
books, and proceeded to examine the contents of another which he had not
yet looked at. It was carelessly nailed down. He loosened one plank, and
began to lift out various articles of female attire--old-fashioned caps,
aprons, dresses with long pointed bodies such as he remembered to have
seen his mother wear when he was a little child.

He shook them out carefully to see there were no moths, and then sat
down to fold them up again one by one. They had belonged to Em's mother,
and the box, as packed at her death, had stood untouched and forgotten
these long years. She must have been a tall woman, that mother of Em's,
for when he stood up to shake out a dress the neck was on a level with
his, and the skirt touched the ground. Gregory laid a nightcap out on
his knee, and began rolling up the strings; but presently his fingers
moved slower and slower, then his chin rested on his breast, and finally
the imploring blue eyes were fixed on the frill abstractedly. When Em's
voice called to him from the foot of the ladder he started, and threw
the nightcap behind him.

She was only come to tell him that his cup of soup was ready; and, when
he could hear that she was gone, he picked up the nightcap again, and
a great brown sun-kapje--just such a kapje and such a dress as one of
those he remembered to have seen a sister of mercy wear. Gregory's
mind was very full of thought. He took down a fragment of an old
looking-glass from behind a beam, and put the kapje on. His beard looked
somewhat grotesque under it; he put up his hand to hide it--that was
better. The blue eyes looked out with the mild gentleness that became
eyes looking out from under a kapje. Next he took the brown dress, and,
looking round furtively, slipped it over his head. He had just got
his arms in the sleeves, and was trying to hook up the back, when an
increase in the patter of the rain at the window made him drag it off
hastily. When he perceived there was no one coming he tumbled the things
back into the box, and, covering it carefully, went down the ladder.

Em was still at her work, trying to adjust a new needle in the machine.
Gregory drank his soup, and then sat