of her teeth
pulled out as have parted with anything once brought into Hynds
House. She preserved everything, good, bad, indifferent. You'd find
luster cider jugs, maybe a fine toby, old Chinese ginger jars, and
the quaintest of Dutch schnapps bottles, cheek by jowl with an iron
warming-pan, a bootjack, a rusty leather bellows, and a box packed
with empty patent-medicine bottles, under the pantry shelf. A
helmet creamer would be full of little rolls of twine, odd buttons,
a wad of beeswax, a piece of asafetida, elastic bands, and corks.
She had used a Ridgway platter with a view of the Hudson River on
it, as a dinner plate for her hound, for we found it wrapped up,
with "Nipper's platter" scrawled on the paper.

By and large, it wasn't an easy task to renovate a brick barracks
finished in 1735, and occupied for ninety-nine years by a lady of
Sophronisba's parts; though I sha'n't tell how we had to tackle it
room by room, nor of the sweating hours spent in, so to speak,
separating the sheep things from the goat things. I can't help
stopping for a minute, though, to gloat over the front drawing-room
that presently emerged, with a cleaned carpet that proved to be a
marvel of hand-woven French art, rosewood sofas and chairs
upholstered in royal blue and rubbed to satiny-browny blackness, two
gloriously inlaid tables, and a Venetian mirror between two windows.

We gave the place of honor on the white marble mantel to a porcelain
painting Alicia found in a work-box--the picture of a woman in gray
brocade sprigged with pink-and-blue posies, a lace fichu about her
slim shoulders, and a cap with a rose in it covering her parted
brown hair. The little boy leaning against her knees had darker blue
eyes, and fairer hair pushed back from a bold and manly forehead.
The painting was about the size of a modern cabinet photograph, and,
though pleasing and spirited, was evidently the work of a gifted
amateur. What gave it potent meaning and appeal was the inscription
lettered on the back:

_Mrs. Lydia Hariott Hynds & Rich'd. Hynds Ag'd 7
Paint'd for Col'nl. J.H. Hynds by his
Affec. Neece Jessamine_

You couldn't help loving him, the little "Richard Ag'd 7." There was
that in the face which won you instantly; it was so clear-eyed, so
gallant, so brave, so _honest_. So we gave him and his pretty, meek
mother the place of honor in the room that had once heard his
laughter and seen her tea