“I’ll have a bad time, I doubt, before I’ve settled what we’re to take!” Mattie laughed, handling her treasures more and more fondly under Dolly’s appreciation. “I thought I’d hardened my heart to part with some of them, this morning, but now that I’m looking at ’em again, I’m not so sure! There’s no sense, though, in taking a chair-leg more than we’re obliged. It’ll cost enough, as it is. I doubt, anyhow, I’ll have to make up my mind to leave pictures and knick-knacks behind.” Dolly’s heart leaped as she looked at a pair of bright pink vases, trimmed with an excellent imitation of sugar icing, seeing them already as her very own. “Photo-frames and such-like won’t pay for the taking, either,” Mattie was saying hesitatingly, “though wild horses ’emselves wouldn’t make me part with the photos. I’ve a regular stack of ’em as They’ve sent me, year in and year out, especially of the children. Some folks’d say it was nonsense taking photos along when you’re going to see the folks themselves, but I’ve grown that used to them I’ve got to have them.” She remembered now that she had not yet spent the hour with the grandchildren which she had promised herself earlier, and proceeded to take it, setting them forth to Dolly with that sense of proud showmanship which the first generation almost invariably seems to feel towards the third. It was impossible to believe, listening to her vivid description of its looks and ways, that she had never yet set eyes upon a single member of it. Smiling and happy, she had found for herself again that first ecstasy which she had felt upon awakening from her dream. Canada was again what she had thought it to be, as she laughed and talked, wearing always that inward look of those who ponder upon hidden treasure. “Luke’s youngest, they say, is as like me as a couple of peas, and Joe’s second takes after Kirkby. He’s a bit darker, perhaps, and he’s brown eyes instead of blue, but there’s no mistaking where he comes from, either in looks or manners. Little Eric, they call him, after his mother’s father, though I don’t know why they need go out of the family when there’s so many good names shouting. I’m right set upon little Eric.... Maggie’s May frames something grand at the piano, and Ellen’s Sally shapes to have a voice.... Luke’s eldest’s getting on for twelve, and can manage a motor-mower ... leastways, they say he can, though I doubt they’re putting it on.”