“Yes, there is if all those cedar chests in the attic are full of old duds. Modern gowns in this old hall would look horrid and the men even worse. There must be stacks if this old manor runs true to form. They never sold things in those days and of course they were too good to pass on to the servants.” The three raced one another up to the attic. The chests were locked, and as even Topper could not produce the keys, the gardener was sent for to pry them open. Then the carefully folded garments were shaken out and inspected. There was nothing more modern than the fashions of the eighteen-nineties, for by that time, no doubt, the Carteret ladies had begun to make over their fine clothes and wear them out. But anything later than 1830 was rejected with scorn. They sorted out gowns of taffeta and satin, mousseline-de-soie and velvet, in styles Pompadour, Empire, Watteau, and the Four Georges; tiny pointed waists, voluminous skirts, long trains and mere slips. “We’ll have to powder our hair and wear corsets,” said Polly, “but we’ll set back a few centuries in that old hall, so who’ll mind a little discomfort?” “Powdered bobbed hair will be a scream,” said Gita, who had been surveying her new possessions with dazzled eyes and hearing a ghostly patter of tiny feet along her nerves. “Why not wigs? One of the hair-dressers in Atlantic City could telephone for them.” “Right. Leave it to me.” Elsie, who had been investigating a chest, hitherto overlooked, lifted out a wedding-dress of heavy satin mellowed to old ivory and covered with priceless point-lace. “Did you ever see anything so lovely?” she gasped. “I know who wore that!” cried Polly. “Your grandmother, Gita. I’ve seen it in an old album of granny’s, I remember—granny, who was one of her bridesmaids, got going about that wedding to mother one day and wondered why all that lace hadn’t been passed on to your aunt Evelyn when she married.” Gita laid the gown across her arms and looked at it reverently. She knew the value of old lace, for her mother had possessed several fine pieces before they went to pay a gambling-debt, and part of her education had been in museums where there was always a room devoted to thread filigree; particularly beloved of Millicent. In Bruges and Brussels she had often seen the nuns at work. But although she had found several pieces of Irish and Honiton in a chest in her grandmother’s room, she had hardly glanced at them. Real lace didn’t match short skirts and bobbed hair. But this mass of point d’Alençon was quite another matter, and she experienced the same sensation as when she had gazed first upon the soft sheen of her pearls. “I shall be married in this,” she announced. “I’d intended to wear any old thing I happened to have on. But _this_——Oh, yes! And just as it is. The waist will have to be let out for I couldn’t stand a corset five minutes.”