`` Jasper Dale never so much as THOUGHT about a woman , '' Carlisle oracles declared . Oracles , however , are not always to be trusted . One day Mrs. Griggs went away from the Dale place with a very curious story , which she diligently spread far and wide . It made a good deal of talk , but people , although they listened eagerly , and wondered and questioned , were rather incredulous about it . They thought Mrs. Griggs must be drawing considerably upon her imagination ; there were not lacking those who declared that she had invented the whole account , since her reputation for strict veracity was not wholly unquestioned . Mrs. Griggs 's story was as follows : -- One day she found the door of the west gable unlocked . She went in , expecting to see bare walls and a collection of odds and ends . Instead she found herself in a finely furnished room . Delicate lace curtains hung before the small , square , broad-silled windows . The walls were adorned with pictures in much finer taste than Mrs. Griggs could appreciate . There was a bookcase between the windows filled with choicely bound books . Beside it stood a little table with a very dainty work-basket on it . By the basket Mrs. Griggs saw a pair of tiny scissors and a silver thimble . A wicker rocker , comfortable with silk cushions , was near it . Above the bookcase a woman 's picture hung -- a water-colour , if Mrs. Griggs had but known it -- representing a pale , very sweet face , with large , dark eyes and a wistful expression under loose masses of black , lustrous hair . Just beneath the picture , on the top shelf of the bookcase , was a vaseful of flowers . Another vaseful stood on the table beside the basket . All this was astonishing enough . But what puzzled Mrs. Griggs completely was the fact that a woman 's dress was hanging over a chair before the mirror -- a pale blue , silken affair . And on the floor beside it were two little blue satin slippers !
Good Mrs. XXXXX did not leave the room until she had thoroughly explored it , even to shaking out the blue dress and discovering it to be a tea-gown -- wrapper , she called it .
Carlisle Dale Griggs day imagination mirror oracles vaseful water-colour work-basket