s in old-fashioned fairy-tale books--so
enormous that any ordinary human head must have been lost in their
depths."

"Did you ever try one on, grandmother?" said Molly.

Grandmother shook her head.

"I should not have been allowed to take such a liberty," she said. "I
stood and stared about me in perfect amazement without speaking for a
minute or two, till my grandmother got down from her stool, and my father
told me to go to speak to her.

"'Are you going away, grandmother?' I said at last, my curiosity
overcoming my shyness. 'Are these all your clothes? You will want a great
many boxes to pack them in, and what queer ones some of them are!'

"'Queer, my dear,' said my grandmother. 'They are certainly not like what
you get now-a-days, if that is what you mean by queer. See here, Nelly,
this is your great-grandmother's wedding dress--white Padusoy embroidered
in gold--why, child, it would stand alone! And this salmon-coloured
satin, with the pea-green slip--will the stuffs they dye now keep their
colour like that a hundred years hence?'

"'It's good strong stuff certainly,' said my father, touching it as he
spoke. But then he went on to say to my grandmother that the days for
such things were past. 'We don't want our clothes to last a century now,
mother,' he said. 'Times are hurrying on faster, and we must make up our
minds to go on with them and leave our old clothes behind. The world
would get too full if everybody cherished bygone relics as you do.'

"I don't think she much liked his talking so. She shook her head and said
something about revolutionary ideas, which I didn't understand. But my
father only laughed; his mother and he were the best of friends, though
he liked to tease her sometimes. I wandered about the room, peeping in
among the rows of quaint costumes, and thinking to myself what fun it
would be to dress up in them. But after a while I got tired, and I was
hungry too, so I was very glad when grandmother, having hung out the last
dress to air, said we must go down to dinner--my father had left some
time before----"

"What did you have for dinner, grandmother?" said Sylvia. "It isn't that
I care so much about eating," she added, blushing a little, "but I like
to know exactly the sort of way people lived, you know."

"Only I wish you wouldn't interrupt grandmother," said Molly. "I'm _so_
afraid it'll be bed-time before she finishes the story."

"Which isn't yet begun--eh, Molly?" said grandmot