Cora did not start. She winked at Bess, who was always apt to "bubble over."
"Anchors?" repeated Cora. "Set in on the sides, I suppose? Well, that would be odd. But where can you get such a piece as that?"
Cora did not mean to ask outright where the piece might be obtained; what she meant was: "That will surely be a difficult thing to find."
"Oh, there is one—some place," replied the man, little dreaming what a tumult his words were creating in the brains of the anxious motor girls. "And when I get an order I always get the article. I shall have a warming pan for this young lady by to-morrow noon."
"Then suppose I order a table, like the one with the oars and anchors?" ventured Cora. "Could I get that?"
"Oh, no, miss," and he shook his head with importance. "You do not understand the trade. That would be a duplicate, and in furniture we guarantee to give you an original—I can only get one seaman's card table, and that is ordered."
Cora smiled and walked off a little to gain time, and to think. Her manner told the girls plainly not to mention the matter. She would act as wisely as she was capable of doing. She overhauled some blue plates and selected a pair of "Baronials."
The man went into ecstasies, describing "every crack in the dishes," Maud said to Daisy, but Cora bought the plates, and paid him his price without question.
Adele and Tillie had piled up quite a heap of brass and copper, and, unlike Cora, they argued some about the cost, but finally compromised, and put the entire heap into an old Chinese basket which the man "threw in."
"Then I cannot get a table," said Cora, purposely displaying a roll of bills which she was replacing in her purse.