When Amanda entered the kitchen she found her mother and the visitor cutting carpet rags. Old clothes were falling under the snip of the shears into a peach basket, ready to be sewn together, wound into balls and woven into rag carpet by the local carpet weaver on his hand loom.
“Hello,” said the girl as she laid a few books on the kitchen table.
“Books again,” sniffed Aunt Rebecca. “I wonder now how much money gets spent for books that ain’t necessary.”
“Oh, lots of it,” answered the girl cheerfully.
“Umph, did you buy those?”
“Yes, when I went to Millersville.”
“My goodness, what a lot o’ money goes for such things these days! There’s books about everything, somebody told me. There’s even some wrote about the Pennsylvania Dutch and about that there Stiegel glass some folks make such a fuss about. I don’t see nothin’ in that Stiegel glass to make it so dear. Why, I had a little white glass pitcher, crooked it was, too, and nothin’ extra to look at. But along come one of them anteak men, so they call themselves, the men that buy up old things. Anyhow, he offered to give me a dollar for that little pitcher. Ach, I didn’t care much for it, though it was Jonas’s granny’s still. I sold it to that man quick before he’d change his mind and mebbe only give me fifty cents.”
“You sold it?” asked Amanda. “And was it this shape?”
She made a swift, crude sketch of the well-known Stiegel pitcher shape.
“My goodness, you drawed one just like it! It looked like that.”