At Home on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball Page B

toward the far corner. “I remember seeing it from when we were trying to get the house ready for Christmas and bringing down all the furniture that was stored up here.”
    Cici glanced around the dusty, cluttered space with interest. “Obviously, you didn’t get all the furniture that was up here.”
    Cici, whose arm had been in a sling at the time, had been limited to standing at the bottom of the stairs and directing Farley as to where to place the pieces of furniture they had recovered. She had forgotten how much still remained in the loft.
    “Well, some of it’s no good. I’m going to pay Noah to start clearing this place out before it gets too hot. But this little vanity table would look great in that nook in the guest room, and I’d like to get it down before Paul and Derrick get here. I think we can handle it, don’t you?”
    They started lifting cardboard boxes off the canvas-covered surface. “I can’t believe we’ve been here a year and we still haven’t cleaned out the attics,” Cici said. She set one of the boxes on the floor and it rattled. “Or even inventoried everything we own.”
    “Well, we’ve been a little busy,” Lindsay pointed out dryly, “what with tearing out wiring and putting in plumbing and moving walls and all.” She pulled off the canvas sheet to reveal a pretty little cubbied vanity with a cherry finish that was only a little dulled with age. “Isn’t this precious?” She tested its weight by lifting the two front legs off the ground. “I think we can get it up the stairs if we take the drawers out.”
    The loft was accessed via a ladder, but during the Great Christmas Furniture Exodus Farley had devised a method of lowering the heavier pieces to the ground via the large double loft doors on the west side of the building using a pulley and ropes. The only difficulty then had been carrying the furniture to the house and up the stairs to the bedrooms . . . which was another reason they had been in no hurry to clear out the loft over the winter.
    Cici did her own weight test with one hand and agreed. “I wonder why they stored all their old furniture out here instead of in the house attic.”
    Lindsay shrugged and started removing drawers. “Ida Mae said there used to be a lot of servants. Maybe they used the house attic for sleeping space.”
    “Probably.” Cici sank down on her haunches and began to poke around in one of the boxes. “What is all this stuff ?”
    Lindsay said, “Well, will you look at this?”
    From one of the drawers she had pulled out a round cardboard container that was decorated in a rose pattern. She carefully prized the lid off and sniffed inside, smiling. “Talcum powder.”
    Cici sniffed the box, too, and a similar pleasurable smile crossed her face. “It smells like my grandmother.”
    “Mine, too. Gosh, it must have been here for years.”
    “Well, they don’t make artificial rose scent like they used to.” Cici turned back to the box she had been sorting through. “Linds, look at this.”
    Lindsay recapped the box and put it aside, frowning in puzzlement at the tinted glass square Cici had removed from the box. “What is it?”
    “Look.” Cici turned the glass toward the light that poured in from the high windows opposite the loft, and an amber image became visible.
    Lindsay gasped and dropped to her knees beside Cici. “Good heavens! That’s a glass plate from one of the old shadow-box cameras.” She took the plate in her hands reverently. “Look at that! This must be from the turn of the century—look how the woman is dressed. And—why, that’s our house! Cici, this must be one of the first photographs taken after the house was built!”
    The plate depicted a woman in a long pale dress with leg-o’-mutton sleeves, standing on a lawn beneath the limbs of a spreading oak. Her dark hair was pulled back into a poufy bun, and her features were fair. She looked to be in her midthirties but, by the standards of that day, she was