Shrewdly Miss Crevey examined the beads.
“Be they yours?” she asked suspiciously.
“Heirlooms,” stammered Jacqueline, and then dodged the subject. “I know they’re worth more than five dollars.”
“Hm!” sniffed Miss Crevey. She sounded noncommittal enough, but she put the beads into the drawer of an old secretary behind the counter, and turned the key upon them. Then she wrapped the cup and saucer carefully in old newspapers, and even, for greater safety, packed them in a large old button box.
“Don’t ye break ’em now!” she cautioned.
Jacqueline didn’t. She had broken enough dragon china, she felt, to last her for a lifetime. She climbed into the car beside Ralph, at five o’clock, as circumspectly as if it were a baby that she held in her arms. She clambered out again at the kitchen door of the farm, with equal care.
“Aunt Martha!” she cried gaspingly. “Aunt Martha! See what I’ve got. I told you I would. For Grandma!”
With hands that shook with eagerness, Jacqueline unwrapped the cup and saucer, and for once she saw Aunt Martha stand (in Grandma’s phrase!) “flabbergasted.”
“For the land sake, Jackie!” Aunt Martha finally got her breath. “Wherever in the world did you dig up that old china?”
“I found it—in Miss Crevey’s shop.”