convinced that the lives of her grandmothers must have been spent in
giving tea-parties. We counted ten sets of cups, beside quantities of
stray ones; and some member of the family had evidently devoted her time
to making a collection of pitchers.

There was an escritoire in Miss Brandon's own room, which we looked over
one day. There was a little package of letters; ship letters mostly,
tied with a very pale and tired-looking blue ribbon. They were in a
drawer with a locket holding a faded miniature on ivory and a lock of
brown hair, and there were also some dry twigs and bits of leaf which
had long ago been bright wild-roses, such as still bloom among the
Deephaven rocks. Kate said that she had often heard her mother wonder
why her aunt never had cared to marry, for she had chances enough
doubtless, and had been rich and handsome and finely educated. So there
was a sailor lover after all, and perhaps he had been lost at sea and
she faithfully kept the secret, never mourning outwardly. "And I always
thought her the most matter-of-fact old lady," said Kate; "yet here's
her romance, after all." We put the letters outside on a chair to read,
but afterwards carefully replaced them, without untying them. I'm glad
we did. There were other letters which we did read, and which interested
us very much,--letters from her girl friends written in the
boarding-school vacations, and just after she finished school. Those in
one of the smaller packages were charming; it must have been such a
bright, nice girl who wrote them! They were very few, and were tied with
black ribbon, and marked on the outside in girlish writing: "My dearest
friend, Dolly McAllister, died September 3, 1809, aged eighteen." The
ribbon had evidently been untied and the letters read many times. One
began: "My dear, delightful Kitten: I am quite overjoyed to find my
father has business which will force him to go to Deephaven next week,
and he kindly says if there be no more rain I may ride with him to see