Page:Sheila and Others (1920).djvu/204

Rh The large tin box on the spare-room closet shelf contained sugared cookies, and what remained of the marble-cake made annually in a milk-pan and of an exceeding excellence. Why they should have been kept in this unnatural place, I know not, unless it were as a safeguard from mischievous fingers and tongues that loved sweetness. I never looked at this box, or appeared aware of its existence, when visiting that closet in company with Aunt Janey, but I somehow knew from the beginning that it was there. Some things are so inherently related in this world that they find each other by involuntary and subconscious means.

There was also a daguerreotype encased with some tinted and florally-embellished letters in a rosewood and pearl writing-case that reposed on the "what-not" with other sacred objects in the dim, funereal-like parlor. This picture—of an esthetic-looking young man with flowing locks and a voluminous necktie—I distinctly remember to have been shown me by the piece of inquisitiveness next in size above me, and the only possible motive that could have induced our sacrilegious scrutiny in this instance must have arisen in the knowl-