"Ssh! Keep quiet, Joy. Let's hear what he's saying."
Bet answered the old man in her sweetest manner. "We're opening an art shop. We'll be your next door neighbor, Mr. Gruff."
"What are you going to sell? Antiques?"
"Not just at present. Perhaps later we may," answered Bet.
"Don't do it. There's no money in antiques! Not a penny. Of course if you want them, I'll be able to get them for you. I go to all the auctions. I went away out to Connecticut the other day to get some old lamps."
"And did you get them? What were they like?" questioned Bet.
"I didn't get them. They went too high. That's the reason I say there's no money in antiques. It used to be one could pick up things for almost nothing."
"Yes people learned to value their old things."
"Are you Colonel Baxter's girl? I thought so! Now there's a man who knows antiques. Can't get ahead of him on a buy. He knows just what a thing should sell for and half the time he can tell me to a penny what I paid for it."
Bet laughed heartily at this, for she remembered her father telling her how old Peter had tried to sell him some candlesticks at an exorbitant price.