The auctioneer gasped. He gazed at Eleanor and said faintly: “Did you bid a dollar?”
“Of course!”
“All right, Miss, you kin have them, but pay me now fer them, and don’t come back naggin’ me to say I stuck you wid cracked plates, and nicked saucers. You saw’d them afore you bid!”
Eleanor laughed, and handed over a dollar bill, but Mrs. Fabian tried to catch her eye to warn her not to bid recklessly on other things. Polly stood up on the table wondering why Eleanor got the old kitchen dishes.
The moment Lemuel had the dollar safely in his pocket, he remarked: “Gee! I’m goin’ out of this second-hand sellin’ and lay in a stock of ten-cent blue dishes to sell!”
One of the farmers haw-hawed and said: “That’s how Coolworth made so much money! Gettin’ so much cheap stuff and findin’ a pack of silly women to buy ’em.”
Eleanor tossed her head, but had she kept quiet she would not have been the object of pity she found herself, afterward. In self-justification of her purchase, she called out: “You people don’t know genuine old Wedgewood when you see it. I’ve got a big bargain in those eight plates!”
At that statement, a quiet young fellow, who had been standing about watching progress and noting the bids on a paper, laughed. “I don’t want anyone to say they was taken in at my folk’s sale; but I got’ta tell that young lady that I bought them blue dishes myself, last year, at the tea-store in White Plains fer ten cents each.”
Even Polly had to join in the laugh at Eleanor’s expense now, and poor Nolla felt like selling herself for a nickel. But the auctioneer had scant time for jokes or reckless buyers as he was there for business. So he finished the kitchen and called them into the parlor. Here Polly secured a china dog such as were common sixty to eighty years ago; Eleanor got a real bargain, this time, in buying two century old flower-vases for fifty cents. Mrs. Fabian saw an old engraving of “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” as it was taken from the wall behind the door, and offered for a quarter. On the spur of the moment she raised the bid five cents and got the picture which later proved to be one of the rare old originals, worth several hundred dollars.
Dodo ran up a pair of girandoles that stood on the narrow mantel-shelf in the front room, and finally got them for three dollars. Such an unheard-of price made the buyers look at her in pity, and Lemuel remarked: