She spoke quite gravely, but still I thought I saw a kind of a smile go round the corners of her mouth. I suppose she was thinking it was very funny for a boy to care how china was arranged. I don't see why. Boys have got eyes, and some of them have got good taste—more than some girls.
'It was washed while we were away,' she said, 'and the housemaid put it all in, according to the size of the things, I suppose. Nothing to do with the colour or kinds.'
'I've moved a few of them,' I said; 'they look better already. You've got some nice bits; there are one or two very old; I think I saw some Worcester.'
'How learned you are, Jack!' said Dorothea.
But I didn't see it. Nothing's easier than to pick up a smattering—just enough to tell one cup from another, and to seem very wise about it. I didn't mean to do that.
'No,' I said; 'I'm not. There's one cup I can't make out at all.'
'Do you mean the one with the deep purplish flowers?' said she. 'Oh, it is sharp of you to have spotted that one! No one knows for certain what it is; it was given me by an old servant of ours who married and went to live up in Yorkshire; and once when we were at Harrogate we went to see her. She said there were a few old pieces of it in the cottage her husband and she lived at when they were first married, and she gave us each one for a keepsake.'
'Was she your nurse?' asked mother.
'No, only a housemaid; but she was a particularly nice woman, superior to her station. And she and her husband have got on very well. He was under-bailiff to Lord Uxfort up in the north, and then an uncle died and left him a small farm near—oh, where is it near? I forget,—but it's not so very far from London. I've always promised to go to see her some day.'
'That reminds me,' said mums. 'I haven't told you our present difficulty.'