“Yes, to some one. It must be of value, and I want two things.”
“What are the things you want?”
“Money, and a first-rate place—lady’s maid would suit me if I could find a lady to be proud of.”
“You seem to value this book highly.”
“Yes I do—very highly, and to my thinking the price will be growing higher and higher every minute.”
“Yet its first cost could not have been more than thirty dollars.”
“You know that better than I can. It wasn’t the first cost or anything like it, I was thinking of.”
“What then, pray?”
There was a tremor in the proud woman’s voice, spite of the effort she made to control it, and Jane Kelly saw with a throb of pleasure that she grew pale and sat less uprightly in her chair.
“It isn’t the book I’m selling, but what I know of the young lady who owned it. She was a relation of yours.”