with an air of intending to remain
there for some time. She took her buttonholes with her. It was likely
that Nell could not content herself until she had searched every
cupboard and pantry for the missing treasure.

"I declare--it is the beatin'est thing! Whatever can have become of
them?" she apprized Myra. "You find much time to read, Myry?"

Myra found time to read her woman's magazine from cover to cover, in the
course of the month. Some things she read more than once--those frankly
impossible stories in which the heroines were always beautiful and
always loved. Myra had never known a heroine; the women of her
acquaintance were neither beautiful nor adored; and were probably quite
comfortably unaware of this lack.

"I'm getting notional," Myra accused herself fearfully. The Family
Doctor Book, a learned and ancient tome, confirmed these suspicions. It
treated of this, and related matters, with a large assurance, like a
trusty confidant.

"Funny how long Mother stays in her room!" wondered Nell.

"Mebbe she's fell asleep. Old people need all the sleep they can get.
It's mostly so broken."

"I'm agoing to see!" deposed Nell.

Myra had never invaded that withdrawn privacy. But Nell, with her
grenadier step, went swiftly and threw open the door.

"What on earth! Mother!"

Old Mrs. Bray's voice streamed quavering out, "Oh, Nellie! Don't scold
me! Myry!--"

Somehow Myra was there--past the affronted Nell in the door. In the
instant silence they made a strange tableau.

Old Mrs. Bray in her fine gray-and-lavender gown was seated before her
little wash-hand-stand. The floral pitcher in its floral bowl had been
set to one side on the floor. What covered the towel-protected top of
the stand, was Nellie's looted treasure.

There were the fragments of the pink cup and saucer; the leaf-green and
brown majolica bits that had been the pickle-dish; the iridescent curved
sides of George's wife's lemonade-glass; Aunt Em's shattered souvenir
pitcher; Abbie Carter's cracker-jar with its smashed wheat-heads. Myra
only looked bewilderedly; but on Nell's gaping face apprehension
succeeded stupefaction and dissolved in its turn into a great brimming
tenderness.

"Scold you, Mother? Oh, Mother--what must you think me! (Oh, poor
Mother--poor Mother--she's gone daft!)"

"I always admired pretty broken bits of chiny," old Mrs. Bray confessed.
"But the pitcher was a accident--reely it was, Nellie. I never went to
let that fa