“Oh, Madeline, do tell us what you’re going to get,” begged Babbie. But Madeline only smiled mysteriously and told Mrs. Hildreth that she and Betty probably shouldn’t be back for luncheon.
Next morning when they were safely out of ear-shot she divulged her idea. “You know those pretty old Staffordshire china figures? The spotted dogs are the commonest, but there are men and women, too. Oh, you must have seen them, Betty, in the windows of the antique shops—shepherdesses with looped-up skirts, leaning on their crooks, and cute little men with lace ruffles at their wrists and pink coats and silver knee-buckles. They look awfully aristocratic; somehow, I don’t think we could get a better duke.”
Betty hadn’t noticed anything of the sort, so they went a block out of their way down Oxford Street to see some in a shop that Madeline remembered. Sure enough, the window was full of the queer little china figures, and there was one that Betty declared was just the duke for Eleanor.
“Let’s go right in and get it,” she urged jubilantly. “It’s so quaint and—oh, so European somehow. Eleanor will be perfectly delighted.”
Madeline laughed at her innocent enthusiasm. “We can’t afford to buy it here,” she warned her. “Those figures are dreadfully expensive. In a fashionable neighborhood like this they’d probably ask eight or ten dollars for that duke. But the other day when Babe and I were riding on a ’bus away out toward Hammersmith to see how far you could go for fourpence, I noticed a whole cluster of antique shops, and I thought we might find a real bargain out there.”
“But this is such a pretty, graceful little figure,” said Betty doubtfully. “How much are we going to spend for each of the girls?”
“The gargoyles and the photograph that Helen wanted won’t be over sixty cents, so I suppose we ought to find something at about that price for the general present to Eleanor and Bob. Then, of course, we can any of us take any of them whatever extra things we like.”
“Let’s just ask about this duke,” urged Betty, who had lost her heart to the little china figure, and couldn’t believe it cost as much as Madeline thought.
But “Thirty-five shillings,” said the pompous shop-keeper, and Betty had to explain blushingly that she couldn’t afford so much that morning.
“That’s eight dollars and seventy-five cents,” she said dejectedly, as they went off to find the Hammersmith ’bus. “We can’t ever get one for sixty cents, Madeline. The neighborhood wouldn’t make eight dollars difference.”