"What delightful old things!" exclaimed the girl.
"Now, aren't you glad you stayed?" asked Phil, bringing forth a silver cream pitcher of long ago.
Eliza caught sight of the table, and suddenly threw up both hands with an exclamation.
"Mr. Sidney!" she cried. "I've given you the wrong barrel!"
"What? What's happened?" inquired Phil, halted by her tragic tone.
"All Mrs. Ballard's best things are in that barrel; the old china that was her mother's, and the solid silver, and everything; and I've gone and sent yours with the substantial crockery and the beddin' to the island!"
Edgar Fabian regarded Eliza as inimically as his stepmother might have done. So this old servant had been carrying off the heirlooms and been discovered.
He sat up very straight on his blanket couch.
"I'll speak to my mother," he said. "She can come over to-morrow and get them, and buy the right sort of thing for a bachelor"—he threw a glance around the plastered room—"apartment!"