"I thought you were dreadful to run away from me instead of to me."
"I was so sorry; I wanted to get something else before you knew about it.
Did you miss it?"
"I missed something in the room, I could not decide what it was."
"Will the plate do, do you think? Is it handsome enough?"
"It is old enough, that is all the question. Do you know all about
Holland when that plate first came into existence?"
"No; I only know there was a Holland."
"That plate will be a good point to begin with. You and I will study up
Holland some day. I wonder what you know about it now."
"Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland two hundred years ago?"
"No; I'm afraid not. I don't believe she knows more than you do about it. But she will delight in the plate. Which reminds me, your uncle has promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me. And in its mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever. I cannot say that George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren when I show it to them fifty years hence. Unto them I will discover—not a swan's nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years ago."
"It will be a hundred and fifty years old then," returned Marjorie, seriously, "and I think," she added rebukingly, "that you were building castles then."