In Homespun | Page 7

got out
and went in.
An old gentleman came towards me and asked what he could do for me,
and he looked surprised, as though he wasn't used to see such smart
girls in his pokey old shop.
'Please, sir,' I said, 'I want a bowl like this, if you have got such a thing
among your old odds and ends.'
He took the piece of china and looked at it through his glasses for a
minute. Then he gave it back to me very carefully.
'There's not a piece of this ware in the market. The few specimens
extant are in private collections.'
'Oh dear,' I said; 'and can't I get another like it?'
'Not if you were to offer me a hundred pounds down,' said the old man.
I couldn't help it. I sat down on the nearest chair and began to cry, for it
seemed as if all my hopes of Aunt Maria's money were fading away
like the 'roseate hues of early dawn' in the hymn.
'Come, come,' said he, 'what's the matter? Cheer up. I suppose you're in
service and you've broken this bowl. Isn't that it? But never mind--your
mistress can't do anything to you. Servants can't be made to replace
valuable bowls like this.'
That dried my eyes pretty quick, I can tell you.
'Me in service!' I said. 'And my grandfather farming his own land
before you were picked out of the gutter, I'll be bound'--God forgive me
that I should say such a thing to an old man--'and my own aunt with a
better lot of fal-lals and trumpery in her parlour than you've got in all
your shop.'
With that he laughed, and I flounced out of the shop, my cheeks
flaming and my heart going like an eight-day clock. I was so flustered I
didn't notice that some one came out of the shop after me, and I had

walked a dozen yards down the street before I saw that some one was
alongside of me and saying something to me.
It was another old gentleman--at least, not so old as Mr. Aked,--and I
remembered now having seen him at the back of the shop. He was
taking off his hat, as polite as you please.
'You're quite overcome,' he said, 'and no wonder. Come and have a
little dinner with me quietly somewhere, and tell me all about it.'
'I don't want any dinner,' I said; 'I want to go and drown myself, for it's
all over, and I've nothing more to look for. My brother Harry will have
the farm, and I shan't get a penny of aunt's money. Why couldn't they
have made plenty of the ugly old basins while they were about it?'
'Come and have some dinner,' the old gentleman said again, 'and
perhaps I can help you. I have a basin just like that.'
So I did. We went to some place where there were a lot of little tables
and waiters in black clothes; and we had a nice dinner, and I did feel
better for it, and when we had come to the cheese, I told him exactly
what had happened; and he leaned his head on his hands, and he
thought, and thought, and presently he said--
'Do you think your aunt would sell any of her china?'
'That I'm downright sure she wouldn't,' I said; 'so it's no good your
asking.'
'Well, you see, your aunt won't be down for three or four days yet. You
give me your address, and I'll write and tell you if I think of anything.'
And with that he paid the bill and had a cab called, and put me in it and
paid the driver, and I went along home.
I didn't sleep much that night, and next day I was thinking all
sermon-time of whatever I could do, for it wasn't in nature that my aunt
would not find me out before another two days was over my head; and
she had never been so nice and kind, and had even gone so far as to
say--
'Whoever my money's left to, Jane, will be bound not to part with my
china, nor my old chairs and presses. Don't you forget, my child. It's all
written in black and white, and if the person my money's left to sells
these old things, my money goes along too.'
There was no letter on Monday morning, and I was up to my elbows in
the suds, doing aunt's bit of washing for her, when I heard a step on the
brick path, and there was that old gentleman coming round by the

water-butt to the back-door.
'Well?' says he. 'Anything fresh happened?
'For any sake,' says I in a whisper, 'get out of this. She'll