“Where be them stockin’s?”

They opened the fourth drawer. Their hands threshed about, ran into each other, tumbled the contents. They straightened up and looked at the shelves.

“They wouldn’t be in them boxes, would they, Josie?”

“The basket! Let’s try that.”

They took down the large, clean, basswood market-basket. Josie lifted the hinged cover. They found Ma’s white wool “fascinator” hood, a pair of woollen leggings, Ma’s “best” knit slippers, a thick brown veil, and a pair of black woollen mittens.

“Here be the stockin’s.”

They upset the basket. In a rolled-up pair of grey woollen stockings Josie found the keys.

“Give ’em to me. Go an’ look, Josie. Pa may be a-comin’.”

“No, we’d hear ’im. Open the drawer, Aggie, the right-hand one.”

They saw the lacquer box and the red leather purse that Uncle George had brought Ma from the city. Aggie took the purse. Ma used to keep her money in it. But it was empty. The lacquer box held Grandma Chambers’s things. They lifted out carefully the shawl of Spanish lace, a small Bible with a gold clasp, six worn silver spoons, a coral cameo breast-pin, a piece of thin gold chain, and Grandma Chambers’s jet beads with the locket.

“The idea of Pa’s wantin’ to give away Grandma Chambers’s beads an’ locket,” said Aggie. “The idea!”

“It’s just like Pa. He ain’t to be trusted.”

“Now that locket, that locket ’ud look right smart on you, Josie. Ma’d be glad you had it, I know. An’ Ma’d like me to have Grandma Chambers’s earrings.”

“You’ll own three spoons, Aggie, an’ I’ll own the other three. Mebbe the lace shawl ’ud look best on me?”

“I’ll have the Bible, an’ you can have the cameo pin. We’ll find something for Mis’ Lowell.”

The upper left-hand drawer was filled with many small paste-board boxes, one on top of the other. One of them held Ma’s “best” switch—grey, like her own hair—with the side-comb and bone hairpins in place. They took out the comb and pins. In a little box within a box they found an old needle-book that had belonged to Ma’s grandmother. From another box they took a black switch, worn before Ma’s hair turned. Josie thought it might come in handy. In other boxes were several pairs of Ma’s “specs,” which she had put away as she needed stronger one; Ma’s under plate of false teeth, which she had never used; a lock of some one’s hair; several gold-plated breast-pins in the form of flowers; and a round locket that looked like a watch, with pictures of Pa and Ma, taken on their wedding day.

“You take the breast-pins, an’ I’ll have the round locket. We’ll find something for Mis’ Lowell.”

They looked around Ma’s room. Pa’s bureau did not interest them. They took down the jug from the shelf over the door. Its contents rattled. They upset the jug upon the patch-quilt, and divided fifty cents between them. Then they went downstairs.