“Well,” says he, “I could git it cheap, its bein’ so awful old, and I believe it would be as good for her, as a new one.”
“Well,” says I, “before you decide, less look round a little more.”
It does beat all how many things was marked Anno Domina; Josiah said he wondered what under the sun Ann wanted of so much jewelry and stuff, and he thought it looked extravagant in her.
Says he with a dreamy look “Mebby Ann would have left sunthin’ to our girl, if she had known she was named after her—as it were.”
Says I, “Josiah Allen don’t try to git off on that track.” Says I, “It is bad enough to buy second-handed jewelry without plottin’ round tryin’ to git it for nothin’.”
So finally he picked out a ring of carved stone, sardonic, I think I heerd it called, and says he: “this will be just as good for Tirzah Ann as sunthin’ that would cost a dollar or ten shillin’,” says he “I will give old Antique ten cents for it, and not try to beat him down. Do you s’pose the old man would ask any more for it?” says he, addressin’ a middle aged, iron grey man a standin’ near us. “He dug ’em out of old graves and ruins, I hear; they can’t be worth much to him.”
“You can learn the price from Signor Alessandro Castellani.”
“Who?” says Josiah.
“The gentleman who owns the collection, the head of the Italian Commission. There he is a comin’ this way now.” He was a good lookin’ chap, with a animated eager look to his face. And when he got up to us Josiah says to him, “How much is that little sardonic ring?”
Says he, in a pleasant way though sort o’ foreign in axent, “That ring sir, is eight hundred dollars.”