Green Street, Leicester
Square.'

Well, time was getting on and I did a thing I had never done before,
though I had often read of it in the novelettes. I waved my umbrella
and I got into a hansom cab.

'Young man,' I said, 'will you please drive to Mr. Aked's in Green
Street, Leicester Square? and drive careful, young man, for I have a
piece of china in my hands that's worth a fortune to me.'

So he grinned and I got in and the cab started. A hansom cab is
better than any carriage you ever rode in, with soft cushions to
lean against and little looking-glasses to look at yourself in, and,
somehow, you don't hear the wheels. I leaned back and looked at
myself and felt like a duchess, for I had my new hat and mantle on,
and I knew I looked nice by the way the young men on the tops of the
omnibuses looked at me and smiled. It was a lovely drive. When we
got to Mr. Aked's, which looked to me more like a rag-and-bone shop
than anything else, and very poor after the beautiful place in Queen
Victoria Street, I got out and went in.

An old gentleman came towards me and asked what he could do for me,
and he looked surprised, as though he wasn't used to see such smart
girls in his pokey old shop.

'Please, sir,' I said, 'I want a bowl like this, if you have got
such a thing among your old odds and ends.'

He took the piece of china and looked at it through his glasses for
a minute. Then he gave it back to me very carefully.

'There's not a piece of this ware in the market. The few specimens
extant are in private collections.'

'Oh dear,' I said; 'and can't I get another like it?'

'Not if you were to offer me a hundred pounds down,' said the old
man.

I couldn't help it. I sat down on the nearest chair and began to
cry, for it seemed as if all my hopes of Aunt Maria's money were
fading away like the 'roseate hues of early dawn' in the hymn.

'Come, come,' said he, 'what's the matter? Cheer up. I suppose
you're in service and you've broken this bowl. Isn't that it? But
never mind--your mistress can't do anything to you. Servants can't
be made to replace valuable bowls like this.'

That dried my eyes pretty quick, I can tell you.

'Me in service!' I said. 'And my grandfather farming his own land
before you were picked out of the gutter, I'll be bound'--God
forgive me that I should say such a thing to an old man--'and my own
aunt with a better lot of fal-lals and trumpery in her parlour than
you've got in all your