Amanda brought fresh cups from the kitchen.
“I can’t understand it,” Elizabeth Eliza said to Amanda. “Do they come back to you, round through the piazza? Surely there are more cups than there were!”
Her surprise was greater when some of them proved to be coffee-cups that matched the set! And they never had had coffee-cups.
Solomon John came in at this moment, breathless with triumph.
“Solomon John!” Elizabeth Eliza exclaimed; “I cannot understand the cups!”
“It is my doing,” said Solomon John, with an elevated air. “I went to the lady from Philadelphia, in the midst of her talk. ‘What do you do in Philadelphia, when you haven’t enough cups?’ ‘Borrow of my neighbors,’ she answered, as quick as she could.”
“She must have guessed,” interrupted Elizabeth Eliza.
“That may be,” said Solomon John. “But I whispered to Ann Maria Bromwick,—she was standing by,—and she took me straight over into their closet, and old Mr. Bromwick bought this set just where we bought ours. And they had a coffee-set, too”—“You mean where our father and mother bought them. We were not born,” said Elizabeth Eliza.
“It is all the same,” said Solomon John. “They match exactly.”
So they did, and more and more came in.