with.  To this day I like better than any of her valuable jewels her pretty trinkets of garnet and amethyst and topaz, of which she has a great many.  They lay in trays in glass-lidded boxes and I delighted to look at them.  Many of them have come to me as Christmas and birthday gifts since then, and Miss Standish had many of them, for although she was an invalid she delighted in pretty things and was greedy for them.  My dear godmother is one to give with both hands; indeed, to value things chiefly for the pleasure of giving them.

Lying on her bed now were a number of garments so pretty that I cried out in delight.  They were all white, yellowed a little with age, and in some instances with a pattern in colours.

There was a scarf of China crepe, powdered as thickly as possible with roses and golden bees.  There was an opera cloak made of a beautiful old Indian shawl.  There were several frocks of silk and lace and muslin and fine woollen.  There were finely laced and frilled petticoats and silk stockings and shoes with paste buckles and a feather fan.  Also there were fichus and lace-edged handkerchiefs and such things, to strike a young girl dumb with delight.

“They are all for you, Bawn,” she said, smiling at me.  “They were my wedding clothes, and they have lain packed away in silver paper all these years.  I have brought them into the light of day for you.  They ought to have been kept for your wedding perhaps, but as there is nothing definite——­”

“Theobald and I shall be quite old before we need think of marriage, if we ever do,” I said.  “I don’t want to be married.  It is nicer when people will be satisfied with being just dear brothers.  And are they really for me, god-mamma?  Why should you not wear them yourself?  They are so beautiful!”

“Let me have the pleasure of seeing you wear them, Bawn.  We shall depend less on the Dublin shops during our visit.  Louise will fit the things on you.  They will have to be taken in for you.  They will not look old-fashioned.  The fashion has come back to them.”

I stood an hour or more while Louise pinned the things on me, kneeling by my side and turning me this way and that way to look at myself in the long glass of the wardrobe.

She kept up a running conversation on the things while she fitted me; ecstatic little cries of admiration; deep sighs of satisfaction; with all the animation of the Frenchwoman.

“I believe you get at least as much pleasure out of them as I do, Louise,” I said.

“Ah, heaven, more!” she answered.  “Mademoiselle is but a child; she does not know the delight of the feel, the soft lovely feel, of this that drapes so perfectly.  Fortunately Mademoiselle lends herself to the lovely things.  They become her.  They cling to her figure as though they loved it.  The result will be charming.  M. le Capitaine Theobald he should be here to see the result.  How his eyes would sparkle!”