“Yes, it must be,” readily agreed Ruth, who was in line to accept the big dish. “I wonder where we can put it.”
“On that table. Just the place. It will show off beautifully there. Set it right down——”
“But I’m afraid we can’t, Mrs. Ricketts,” Cara just caught her. “That’s Mrs. Brownell’s table and she wants it left clear to show the grain of the wood.”
“Grain of the wood!” repeated the stout lady deridingly. “As if a big table like that could take up room with nothing on it. Here, I’ll put my tureen on it, and if Mrs. Brownell——”
“Yes?” The little word came from Mrs. Brownell’s lips. “Your dish is really antique. What a pity it is cracked,” and she adjusted her silver-framed glasses to see the crack more clearly.
“Cracked!” Mrs. Ricketts wore no glasses but she had very penetrating eyes, and she fairly glared at her old soup tureen as she repeated Mrs. Brownell’s charge against it. “It is no such thing—cracked!”
“Aren’t these cracks?” Nothing could ruffle the magnificent Mrs. Brownell. She had poise.
“No. They are merely tissue scratches. We had an opinion——”
But the argument was lost on the girls. They didn’t care a whoopee about tissue scratches, or cracks on ugly old soup tureens. What they were interested in was the fight, according to Cara.
“And I’ll bet the table wins,” she told Esther. “It’s quite a table, isn’t it?”