Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/71

 cabinet-shelves in the drawing-room now, perhaps the very ones great-grandfather spoke of here. Curious sandalwood toys whose spiciness had almost worn away, bits of ivory, lacquered boxes, gilded dolls, and cloisonne beads—row on magic row they showed dimly behind their prisoning glass. It was only on Sunday afternoons that Jane might open the glazed doors, whose key Aunt Ellen kept beneath her pincushion upstairs, and really touch these strange delightful things. On weekdays they seemed to have shrunk back behind the glass—dream-things communing with themselves. On Sundays they could emerge and wake and breathe their tale of the wonder of a ship coming in—of foreign, corded boxes in a staid New England hallway; of two little girls in pantalets, trying to keep their excitement discreet; of a brown captain-brother cutting cord with a bowie-knife, and a smell of musk and the dry grass that precious things were packed in.

How could Jane know it all? Had the aunts, drowsing after their Sunday dinner, told her more than she realized? Yet the mere telling could not have made it so vivid.