Perhaps the golden age of our nation will some day prove to have
been the period of the home-spun Americans."
As they passed on she spoke to him with an increasing, almost
unnatural gayety. He had a new appreciation of what her charm must
have been when she was a girl. The rooms were full of memories to
her; many of the articles that she caressed with her fingers, and
lingered over with reluctant eyes, connected themselves with days
and nights of revelry and the joy of living; also with prides and
deeds which ennobled her recollection.
"You and Dent know that your father divided equally all that he
had. But everything in the house is mine, and I have made no will
and shall not make any. What is mine belongs to you two alike.
Still, I have made a list of things that I think he would rather
have, and a list of things for you--merely because I wish to give
something to each of you directly."
In a room on a lower floor she unlocked a closet, the walls of
which were lined with shelves. She peeped in; then she withdrew
her head and started to lock the door again; but she changed her
mind and laughed.
"Do you know what these things are?" She touched a large box, and
he carried it over to the bed and she lifted the top off, exposing
the contents. "Did you ever see anything so _black_? This was
the clerical robe in which one of your ancestors used to read his
sermons. He is the one who wrote the treatise on 'God Properly and
Unproperly Understood.
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