Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/49

 different. And not only that, it was also known that every year on her birthday, the twenty-sixth of March, those whom it is hardly right to mention in these humble pages came to call on her. On the twenty-sixth of every March, sometime in the afternoon, a remarkable equipage would appear before the chaste precincts of "Bowley," Croxton Park Road. At that hour every self-respecting pair of eyes in the immediate neighborhood would be ambushed discreetly behind curtains in order to watch the descent of a real live princess with a neat parcel.

The contents of the parcel were said to vary from year to year. Now it would be a piece of choice needle-*work, fashioned by the accomplished hands of Royalty itself, which would take the shape of a cushion or a foot-*stool, now a framed photograph of Prince Adolphus or Princess Geraldine in significant stages of their adolescence, now a chart of the august features of even more important members of the family. Many were the historical objects disposed about Aunt Annie's sitting-room, which the elect of the neighborhood had the privilege of seeing and handling when they came to call upon her. But when all was said, the undoubted gem of the collection was a superb edition, bound in full calf, of the Poems of A. L. O. E., with a certain signature upon the fly-leaf. This was always kept under glass.

It chanced that Aunt Annie had invited herself to tea at Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas, the day after the arrival of the babe. This was strictly in accord with rule and precedent. She was far too much a personage to be invited by her niece Eliza, but if she intimated by a letter, which was the last word in precision, that she proposed to call on a certain day, Eliza humbly and