“The change! She calls seventy-five dollars change. As if a lone woman, like me, ever had so much money by her at once.”
Jane thought of the gold she had seen, but still her wishes turned to the diamonds in preference, and she said quickly,
“Well, money or money’s worth. I don’t much care which, so long as it’s the genuine article.”
“Well,” said the old woman, drawing the casket slowly from her pocket, and opening it; “here’s something now worth five times the money, and just the thing for you, with your plump neck and rosy cheeks. What say? Will ye have ’em instead of the money, especially as the money can’t be had just yet?”
“Let me look at them?” cried Jane, eagerly seizing upon the case. “How they do flash! Ear-rings, breast-pin. Oh! but they burn like fire. What are they?”
“Diamonds; every one worth heaps of money,” answered madame;—“took ’em as security for a debt, you know.”
“And will you really let me have ’em?” asked Jane, almost gasping for breath.
“Well, now you can’t expect ’em all, till there’s been more work done. Diamonds ain’t picked up from the gutters, I can tell you.”
“But how many? The ear-rings now. May I have them?”
She lifted up a long, old-fashioned ear-ring, as she spoke, glittering with innumerable pendants, that made her eyes sparkle as she held it up to the light. “These now?”