E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
Sometimes I would offer a little more to gain some coveted treasure already bid off. How a city friend enjoyed the confidences of a man who had agreed to sell for a profit! How he chuckled as he told of “one of them women who he guessed was a leetle crazy.” “Why, jest think on’t! I only paid ten cents for that hull lot on the table yonder, and she” (pointing to me) “she gin me a quarter for that old pair o’ tongs!”
One day I heard some comments on myself after I had bid on a rag carpet and offered more than the other women knew it was worth.
“She’s got a million, I hear.”
“Wanter know—merried?”
“No; just an old maid.”
“Judas Priest! Howd she git it?”
“Writin’, I ’spoze. She writes love stories and sich for city papers. Some on ’em makes a lot.”
It is not always cheering to overhear too much. When some of my friends, whom I had taken to a favorite junk shop, felt after two hours of purchase and exploration that they must not keep me waiting any longer, the man, in his eagerness to make a few more sales, exclaimed: “Let her wait; her time ain’t wuth nothin’!”
At an auction last summer, one man told me of a very venerable lantern, an heirloom in his first wife’s family, so long, measuring nearly a yard with his hands. I said I should like to go with him to see it, as I was making a collection of lanterns. He looked rather dazed, and as I turned away he inquired of my friend “if I wusn’t rather—” She never allowed him to finish, and his lantern is now mine.