"Ye needn't get huffed if we don't tell ye all the startlin' things!" Mary said.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "there's her cup!" I took the precious thing from the shelf. The handle was gone, there was a gash at the lip and a few new cracks circling around the one I was familiar with twenty years previously.
What visions of the past came to me in front of that old dresser! How often in the long ago she had pushed that old cup gently toward me along the edge of the table—gently, to escape notice and avoid jealousy. Always at the bottom of it a teaspoonful of her tea and beneath the tea a bird's-eye-full of sugar. Each fairy picture of straggling tea leaves was our moving picture show of those old days. We all had tea leaves, but she had imagination. How we laughed and sighed and swithered over the fortunes spread out all over the inner surface of that cup!
"If ye stand there affrontin' our poor oul delf all night we won't haave aany tea at all!" Mary said. The humor had gone from my face and speech from my tongue. I felt as one feels when he looks for the last time upon the face of his best friend. Mary laughed when I laid the old cup on a comparatively new saucer at my place. There was another laugh when I laid it out for customs inspection in the port of New York. I had a set of rather delicate after-dinner coffee cups. One bore the arms of Coventry in colors; another had the seal of St. John's College, Oxford; one was from Edinburgh and another from Paris. They looked aristocratic. I laid them out in a row and at the end of the row sat the proletarian, forlorn and battered—Anna's old tea-cup.
"What did you pay for this?" asked the inspector as he touched it contemptuously with his official toe.
"Never mind what I paid for it," I replied, "it's valued at a million dollars!" The officer laughed and I think the other cups laughed also, but they were not contemptuous; they were simply jealous.
Leisurely I went over the dresser, noting the new chips and cracks, handling them, maybe fondling some of them and putting them as I found them.
"I'll jist take a cup o' tay," Jamie said, "I'm not feelin' fine."
I had less appetite than he had, and Mary had less than either of us. So we sipped our tea for awhile in silence.
"She didn't stay long afther ye left," Jamie said, without looking up. Turning to Mary he continued, "How long was it, aanyway, Mary?"