He watched her wipe it, seizing each piece with a quick firmness that seemed likely to break it, but never did. He kept still, but since he was very close to her he at last made her nervous, and she dropped a bit of Worcester Royal. He caught it, and remarked that the robin’s egg rim was exquisite.
She received the treasure back with a smile of gratitude, but did not deign to tell him the origin of the plate. She knew that it had been ordered from the pottery for her mother as a wedding gift and that it did not arrive till months after her mother was married. It was from a friend down east to whom her mother used to refer as Susan Endicott.
By and by Jean filled a fry pan with odds and ends for her dog, and stepped outside to find him. The minute she was gone, Marvin slipped into the storeroom and lifted cover after cover. Almost every container was empty.
When she returned, he was sitting as before on the woodbox, pinching Pat’s fingers as if to restore circulation.
“Now that you are so rich with your ten dollars, don’t you want to go shopping? I have a borrowed launch up at the post-office pier.”
She shook her head.
He reached down into the woodbox, extracted a newspaper, and proceeded to return scorn for scorn by reading to himself. But suddenly he made an exclamation.
“Why, it says here that Dr. Ambrose Rich and his charming daughter are going to take a drive tomorrow afternoon, leaving the Rich pier at two o’clock fast time, in order to view the landscape from the top of the mountain!”
She dropped her dry towel and exclaimed,
“Oh, how wonderful!”