But, oh, Aunt Grizzel, _how_ pretty she was when she was a young lady! That time that she danced with my grandfather in the great saloon.

And how very nice you and Aunt Tabitha looked then, too." Miss Grizzel held her very breath in astonishment; and no doubt if Miss Tabitha had known she was doing so, she would have held hers too.

But Griselda lay still, gazing at the fire, quite unconscious of her aunt's surprise.
"Your papa told you all these old stories, I suppose, my dear," said Miss Grizzel at last.
"Oh no," said Griselda dreamily.

"Papa never told me anything like that.

Dorcas told me a very little, I think; at least, she made me want to know, and I asked the cuckoo, and then, you see, he showed me it all.
It was so pretty." Miss Grizzel glanced at her sister.
"Tabitha, my dear," she said in a low voice, "do you hear ?" And Miss Tabitha, who really was not very deaf when she set herself to hear, nodded in awestruck silence.
"Tabitha," continued Miss Grizzel in the same tone, "it is wonderful! Ah, yes, how true it is, Tabitha, that 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy'" (for Miss Grizzel was a well-read old lady, you see); "and from the very first, Tabitha, we always had a feeling that the child was strangely like Sybilla." "Strangely like Sybilla," echoed Miss Tabitha.
"May she grow up as good, if not quite as beautiful--_that_ we could scarcely expect; and may she be longer spared to those that love her," added Miss Grizzel, bending over Griselda, while two or three tears slowly trickled down her aged cheeks.