My sister caught her breath.
"For sale?"
"If Madame pleases." Adèle and Jill clasped one another. "I will bring it to-morrow."
With an obvious effort Daphne controlled her excitement.
"I—we should like to have a look at it," she said.
Planchet inclined his head.
"To-morrow morning, Madame."
Without more ado he packed up his traps, announced that, as he was returning on the morrow, there was now no occasion for him to wait for his money, and, thanking us profusely for our patronage and assuring us that he was ever at our service, summoned his employee and withdrew humbly enough.
It was fully a quarter of an hour before the first wave of our pent-up enthusiasm had spent itself. After a positive debauch of self-congratulation, amicable bickering with regard to the precise order of precedence in which an antiquary would place our acquisitions, and breathless speculation concerning their true worth, we sank into sitting postures about the room and smiled affectionately upon one another.
"And now," said Berry, "what about tying them up?"