"You'll see when I get it," was the evasive answer.
"Oh, bother your mysteries! You needn't make a secret of it, Just tell me what it is and what it's for."
With all her heart, Silvia wished that she could answer that question. Thinking she could not be very far wrong, she ventured to say,–
"It's a lovely antique vase. I'm going to put a running border of roses and pansies on it,–the sweetest pictures you ever saw,–and I'll put it on the mantel for flowers."
"I never heard of them before," persisted Anna. "Where did you see them, Sil?"
Another falsehood was required.
"I saw a great many pretty things when I was in the city last March, and cuspadores were among them."
"Well, I'll wait and see yours," answered unsuspicious Anna. "If I like it, I'll get one too. Now mind you show it to me first when you've finished it."
As soon as school was dismissed, Silvia hurried through Atwood to the store of Mr. Morris.
The clerk who came bowing to her was a young man for whom she had a special dislike,–"a conceited idiot," she called him to her companions, "with an offensive familiarity of manner." In reality, Tom Jordan was a well-meaning young man, though rather silly, but his vanity and conceit happened to jar upon the same marked characteristics in Miss Silvia.