They don't still, for
that matter. A cumbersome, stately Dutch clock and a toast-rack of
what Josephine styled medieval pattern, were among the other
discoveries. The latter was reposing in a soap-box in company with a
battered, vulgar nutmeg-grater. But the pieces of resistance, as I
called them, on account of the difficulty we had in moving them from
behind a pile of old window-blinds, were the portraits of a little
gentleman in small-clothes, with his hair in a cue and a seeming cast
in one eye, and a stout lady with a high complexion and corkscrew
ringlets.
"Oh, Fred, who are they?" cried Josephine, ecstatically, and she began
to dust the seedy, frameless canvases with a reverential air. "Where
did they come from?"
"They're ancestors of mine, love."
"Ancestors? How lovely, Fred! I didn't know you had any. I mean I
didn't know you had any who had their portraits painted."
"On the contrary, Josephine, I told you who they were when we were
engaged, and I remember I was rather anxious to hang them in the
dining-room, but you said they were a pair of old frumps, and that you
wouldn't give them house space. So we compromised on the attic."
"Did I?" said my darling, gravely. "Well it must have been because the
dining-room was too small for them. They will look delightfully in our
new one, when they are mounted and touched up a bit, and they will set
off our Copley of my great-aunt in the turban.
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