had searched for a
certain trunk, and when at last she spied it something like an old
grief clouded her eyes. But as she peered about and began pulling
things out to the light she forgot the trunk with the brass nailheads.
She laughed when she came across the crinoline hoops and the droll
little velvet bonnets.

"Here are your great-grandmother's crinolines, John. My! The times we
girls had playing with these things, for even in our day they were
old-fashioned. And this little velvet hat I remember Cynthia wore once
to an old-time social and took a prize."

Over in another corner Nan was making discoveries.

"My conscience--look at this!" she suddenly cried. "Here's an etching,
a genuine etching, a beautiful thing and all covered with dust. Why,
the one I bought for a hundred and fifty dollars in Holland last year
isn't half as good. Why, whoever had it put up here?"

From the other side of the huge room Cynthia's son wanted to know if an
old grandfather's clock couldn't be mended.

"Why, it must be as old as the hills. It has a copy of Franklin's Poor
Richard's Almanac pasted on the back. It--why, it's an heirloom and
I'm going to get it patched up."

"That clock used to tick in the up-stairs hall forty years ago--I
remember--" Grandma stopped as if a sudden thought had struck her.
She dropped an old faded lamp mat and a rag rug and came over to look
at the face of what had been an old friend. Many and many a time its
mellow booming of the hours had cut short a lengthy, merry conference
in Cynthia's room and sent her scurrying home to her waiting tasks.

"John," whispered Grandma with sudden intuition, "I don't believe
there's anything the matter with that clock. It was stopped--they said
your grandfather stopped it after your mother left for India. I used
to watch him wind it--here, let me at it. Yes," triumphantly, "here's
the key."

Grandma's hands shook noticeably and her lips trembled as she wound it.
And when it began to whir and then settled down to its clear even tick
Grandma just sat down and cried a bit.

"I can't help it," she explained as she wiped her eyes, "that clock
knows me as well as I know its face. Why, many a time Cynthia and I'd
sit right where we could look at it--while we were telling each other
foolish little happenings--so's we wouldn't talk too long."

Grandma went back to where she had left that faded lamp mat but she
knew what was about to happen in that attic th