"It is your mother's," Catherine said. "She sent it to us in the November of the year fifteen, because the sleeves were an old shape and she did not want a new gown. I took the sleeves out and cut them narrow and made the cording round the neck to use up the stuff. She came herself for the fitting and stood on that same stool without one complaint, which very few ladies do."
"What are the three lines?"
Catherine read them, because they were written to be read: "Was a blue silk, London made, sleeves of the old shape. Became a blue silk with narrow sleeves and corded neck. Worn by Her Grace the Duchess of Fenwood." She paused. "There is a fourth line under it. I broke my own rule the once."
"What does it say?"
"It says: She took her own shawl off the chair and put it around my shoulders because the room was cold."
The nursery was very quiet. At the other end of it, Mrs. Locksley had stopped talking about linen presses some time ago. Lady Ellen Rushmere stood with her hand on the page, and her jaw set exactly like a woman of forty determined not to make an exhibition of herself in company.
"You may measure me," she said, "if you are quick."
Catherine was quick. She measured her at the window in the good light, and told her every measurement out loud as she took it, because there is nothing in the world so unbearable to a child as being discussed over her own head.
"Twenty-two inches. Fifteen from the neck to the waist behind"—which was three inches more than the black frock allowed. The frock had been pulling the child's shoulders forward for half a year, and nobody in that great, clean house had noticed.
"You have grown out of everything you have," Catherine said. "That is not carelessness. It is only what nine does."
"Aunt Marfleet says I am neglected."
The tape stopped for half a second, and then went on. "Does she?"
"She said it in the hall in the summer to Mr. Petherick. She said, 'Look at the child, she is neglected.' And she was crying when she said it. And then she gave me a workbox with a mother-of-pearl lid." A pause. "I do not like the workbox. I like my aunt. Those are two different things, and everybody keeps making them one."
"So they do," Catherine agreed. "Turn round, please. Chin up."