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Sally took flying leaps across the storeroom. She flung open the window and tossed out the mangy tippet. “This is simply awful!” she declared, as she returned. “Edward, don’t you think we are justified in having Thomas take all these things out in the back yard and making a bonfire of the whole lot?”

“No, my dear.”

“But, Edward, nobody can tell what will come next. If Content’s aunt had died of a contagious disease, nothing could induce me to touch another thing.”

“Well, dear, you know that she died from the shock of a carriage accident, because she had a weak heart.”

“I know it, and of course there is nothing contagious about that.” Sally took up an ancient bandbox and opened it. She displayed its contents: a very frivolous bonnet dating back in style a half-century, gay with roses and lace and green strings, and another with a heavy crape veil dependent.

“You certainly do not advise me to keep these?” asked Sally, despondently.

Edward Patterson looked puzzled. “Use your own judgment,” he said, finally.

Sally summarily marched across the room and flung the gay bonnet and the mournful one out of the window. Then she took out a bundle of very old underwear which had turned a saffron yellow with age. “People are always coming to me for old linen in case of burns,” she said, succinctly. “After these are washed I can supply an auto da fe.”

Poor Sally worked all that day and several days afterward. The rector deserted her, and she relied upon her own good sense in the disposition of little Content’s legacy. When all was over she told her husband.

“Well, Edward,” said she, “there is exactly one trunk half full of things which the child may live to use, but it is highly improbable. We have had six bonfires, and I have given away three suits of old clothes to Thomas’s father. The clothes were very large.”

“Must have belonged to Eudora’s first husband. He was a stout man,” said Edward.

“And I have given two small suits of men’s clothes to the Aid Society for the next out-West barrel.”

“Eudora’s second husband’s.”

“And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas’s wife ten old wool dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the other things which did not go into the bonfires went to the Aid Society. They will go back out West.” Sally laughed, a girlish peal, and her husband joined. But suddenly her smooth forehead contracted. “Edward,” said she.

“Well, dear?”

“I am terribly puzzled about one thing.” The two were sitting in the study. Content had gone to bed. Nobody could hear easily, but Sally Patterson lowered her voice, and her honest, clear blue eyes had a frightened expression.

“What is it, dear?”

“You will think me very silly and cowardly, and I think I have never been cowardly, but this is really very strange. Come with me. I am such a goose, I don’t dare go alone to that storeroom.”

The rector rose. Sally switched on the lights as they went up-stairs to the storeroom.

“Tread very softly,” she whispered. “Content is probably asleep.”

The two tiptoed up the stairs and entered the storeroom. Sally approached one of the two new trunks which had come with Content from out West. She opened it. She took out a parcel nicely folded in a large towel.

“See here, Edward Patterson.”

The rector stared as Sally shook out a dress — a gay, up-to-date dress, a young girl’s dress, a very tall young girl’s, for the skirts trailed on the floor as Sally held it as high as she could. It was made of a fine white muslin. There was white lace on the bodice, and there were knots of blue ribbon scattered over the whole, knots of blue ribbon confining tiny bunches of rosebuds and daisies. These knots of blue ribbon and the little flowers made it undeniably a young girl’s costume. Even in the days of all ages wearing the costumes of all ages, an older woman would have been abashed before those exceedingly youthful knots of blue ribbons and flowers.