“Oh, I don’t know,” said Madeline easily. “I’ve bought silver boxes in Holland for thirty cents and matched them on Fifth Avenue for five dollars. Anyhow it will be fun hunting.”
It was fun. The Hammersmith shops were crowded with all sorts of interesting old odds-and-ends, the like of which Betty had never seen before. She admired the glib way in which Madeline chatted with the shop-keepers about strange things like black Wedgwood, Chippendale chairs, and Flemish inlay. But when they inquired for Staffordshire figures no one seemed to have any, or at least not any that could pass for a duke. But every one was very obliging about suggesting more shops to try, and when that particular neighborhood was quite exhausted some one sent the girls off on what proved to be a wild goose chase to the shops near Nottinghill Gate, “where there isn’t any hill nor any gate,” as Betty explained later, in relating the day’s adventures, “so how can you tell when to get off the ’bus?”
And as they couldn’t tell, they were carried six blocks past and had to walk back in the noonday heat, only to find that the biggest shop, which had been so highly recommended, kept nothing but brasses.
“We’ll go in here,” said Madeline, opening the door of a dusky little second-hand store with an impatient jerk, “and if they haven’t what we want we’ll stop. Yes, no matter if they tell us positively that a shop round the corner is packed tight with Staffordshire figures, we won’t go to it. Instead we’ll go and get a cool and luscious luncheon,—though where we can find one in this dingy neighborhood, I’m sure I don’t know.”
A small girl with wisps of tow-colored hair falling over her eyes came out from a back room to see what they wanted.
She shook her head doubtfully when Madeline mentioned Staffordshire. “I’m sure I couldn’t say, ma’am. She’s out—the madame is—and I couldn’t rightly say what we have. Would you know it if you saw it? You might look about then.”
So they “looked about,” among the curious agglomeration of mirrors, candlesticks, lustre jugs, cameos, and time-stained engravings, all standing in dusty disarray on top of Queen Anne sideboards, carved centre tables, and beautiful old Sheraton writing-desks with secret compartments, that set Betty, who was having her first taste of the delights of antique-hunting, wild with delight. But though they poked into every nook and corner, no Staffordshire figures came to light.
“Well, we shall have to give it up,” said Madeline dejectedly. “How much is that lustre pitcher, please—the fat little one with the roses in the border?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” confessed the little maid sadly. “You see very few comes here in the morning, and it’s so very difficult remembering the prices, ma’am.”
“Oh, dear!” Madeline wanted the fat little pitcher all the more now that she couldn’t have it. “When will the owner of the shop be back, do you think?”