"Do you mean these pieces?" The salesman was almost too bewildered to speak.
"Why, of course, they belong to me, do they not?" and a smile twinkled around the corners of Brenda's mouth. At last the salesman understood.
"It's very kind of you," he said, emptying the pieces from the cover into a small pasteboard box. "Mayn't we send it home?"
"Yes, after all, you may send it. Please have it packed carefully;" and this time both Brenda and the salesman smiled outright.
"It's the second thing," said the latter, "that Maggie has broken lately. She's bound to lose her place. It took a week's wages to pay for the cup, and I don't know what she could have done about this. It would have taken more than six weeks' pay."
"I should like to see her," said Brenda. "Can I go where she is?"
"Certainly, she's in the waiting-room, just over there."
"Come, come, Maggie," said Brenda gently, when she found the girl still in tears; "stop crying, you won't have to pay for the glass vase. You know I bought it, and I'm having the pieces sent home."
As the girl gazed at Brenda in astonishment her tears ceased to flow from her red-rimmed eyes. But the young lady's words seemed so improbable that in a moment sobs again shook her frame.
"It cost twenty dollars," she said; "I heard him say it. I can't ever pay it in the world, and I don't want to go to prison."