I was a favourite with them , yet I could never overcome a certain awe of them both . Grandmother was a tall , dignified old lady with keen black eyes that seemed veritably to bore through one . She always wore stiffly-rustling gowns of rich silk made in the fashion of her youth . I suppose she must have changed her dress occasionally , but the impression on my mind was always the same , as she went trailing about the house with a big bunch of keys at her belt -- keys that opened a score of wonderful old chests and boxes and drawers . It was one of my dearest delights to attend Grandmother in her peregrinations and watch the unfolding and examining of all those old treasures and heirlooms of bygone Laurances . Of Aunt Winnifred I was less in awe , possibly because she dressed in a modern way and so looked to my small eyes more human and natural . As Winnifred Laurance she had been the beauty of the family and was a handsome woman still , with brilliant dark eyes and cameo-like features . She always looked very sad , spoke in a low sweet voice , and was my childish ideal of all that was high-bred and graceful . I had many beloved haunts at the Grange , but I liked the garret best . It was a roomy old place , big enough to have comfortably housed a family in itself , and was filled with cast-off furniture and old trunks and boxes of discarded finery . I was never tired of playing there , dressing up in the old-fashioned gowns and hats and practising old-time dance steps before the high , cracked mirror that hung at one end . That old garret was a veritable fairyland to me . There was one old chest which I could not explore and , like all forbidden things , it possessed a great attraction for me . It stood away back in a dusty , cobwebbed corner , a strong , high wooden box , painted blue . From some words which I had heard Grandmother let fall I was sure it had a history ; it was the one thing she never explored in her periodical overhaulings . When I grew tired of playing I liked to creep up on it and sit there , picturing out my own fancies concerning it -- of which my favourite one was that some day I should solve the riddle and open the chest to find it full of gold and jewels with which I might restore the fortune of the Laurances and all the traditionary splendours of the old Grange . I was sitting there one day when Aunt Winnifred and Grandmother Laurance came up the narrow dark staircase , the latter jingling her keys and peering into the dusty corners as she came along the room . When they came to the old chest , Grandmother rapped the top smartly with her keys . `` I wonder what is in this old chest , '' she said . `` I believe it really should be opened .
The moths may have got into it through that crack XXXXX the lid . ''
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