They were all upstairs in the great linen-closet. There was an enormous quantity of linen at the farm, each aunt having her separate store, marked with her own maiden initials; about once a year, when they needed new pudding-cloths, it was all taken out, and gone through, and regraded from unused best to ready for cutting up. As a rule my aunts enjoyed this business enormously: they had a great feeling for linen, and so loyally and lengthily admired each other’s double-damask napkins, or hand-worked runners or Irish linen sheets, it was often a couple of hours before the last pile was hoisted back in place. On this occasion, to make things even pleasanter, they were replenishing the lavender-bags at the same time: when I looked in all the small muslin sacks lay empty in a neat pile, their contents tipped into, and almost filling, a two-quart measure, and my Aunt Rachel stood spoon in hand beside a great fragrant purple mound on a great wooden tray. The scent was indescribably delicious.
