to
myself, 'Suppose he's brought his bowl and is wishful to sell it.' I
got those things through the blue-water pretty quick, I can tell
you. I often wish I could get a maid who would work as fast as I
used to when I was a girl. Then I ran up and asked aunt if she could
spare me to run down to the shop for some sago, and I put on my
sunbonnet and ran up, just as I was, to the church porch. The old
gentleman was skipping with impatience. I've heard of people
skipping with impatience, but I never saw any one do it before.

'Now, look here,' he said, 'I want you--I must--oh, I don't know
which way to begin, I have so many things to say. I want to see your
aunt, and ask her to let me buy her china.'

'You may save your trouble,' I said, 'for she'll never do it. She's
left her china to me in her will,' I said.

Not that I was quite sure of it, but still I was sure enough to say
so. The old gentleman put down his brown-paper parcel on the porch
seat as careful as if it had been a sick child, and said--

'But your aunt won't leave you anything if she knows you have broken
the bowl, will she?'

'No,' I said, 'she won't, that's true, and you can tell her if you
like.' For I knew very well he wouldn't.

'Well,' says he, speaking very slowly, 'if I lent you my bowl, you
could pretend it's hers and she'll never know the difference, for
they are as like as two peas. I can tell the difference, of course,
but then I'm a collector. If I lend you the bowl, will you promise
and vow in writing, and sign it with your name, to sell all that
china to me directly it comes into your possession? Good gracious,
girl, it will be hundreds of pounds in your pocket.'

That was a sad moment for me. I might have taken the bowl and
promised and vowed, and then when the china came to me I might have
told him I hadn't the power to sell it; but that wouldn't have
looked well if any one had come to know of it. So I just said
straight out--

'The only condition of my having my aunt's money is, that I never
part with the china.'

He was silent a minute, looking out of the porch at the green trees
waving about in the sunshine over the gravestones, and then he
says--

'Look here, you seem an honourable girl. I am a collector. I buy
china and keep it in cases and look at it, and it's more to me than
meat, or drink, or wife, or child, or fire--do you understand? And I
can no more bear to think of that china being lost to the world in a
cottage in