g over the old dresser I noticed several additions to the
inventory I knew. The same old plates were there, many of them broken
and arranged to appear whole. All holes, gashes, dents and cracks were
turned back or down to deceive the beholder. There were few whole pieces
on the dresser.

"Great guns, Mary," I exclaimed, "here are two new plates and a new cup!
Well, well, and you never said a word in any of your letters about
them."

"Ye needn't get huffed if we don't tell ye all the startlin' things!"
Mary said.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "there's _her_ cup!" I took the precious thing from
the shelf. The handle was gone, there was a gash at the lip and a few
new cracks circling around the one I was familiar with twenty years
previously.

What visions of the past came to me in front of that old dresser! How
often in the long ago she had pushed that old cup gently toward me along
the edge of the table--gently, to escape notice and avoid jealousy.
Always at the bottom of it a teaspoonful of _her_ tea and beneath the
tea a bird's-eye-full of sugar. Each fairy picture of straggling tea
leaves was our moving picture show of those old days. We all had tea
leaves, but she had imagination. How we laughed and sighed and swithered
over the fortunes spread out all over the inner surface of that cup!

"If ye stand there affrontin' our poor oul delf all night we won't haave
aany tea at all!" Mary said. The humor had gone from my face and speech
from my tongue. I felt as one feels when he looks for the last time upon
the face of his best friend. Mary laughed when I laid the old cup on a
comparatively new saucer at my place. There was another laugh when I
laid it out for customs inspection in the port of New York. I had a set
of rather delicate after-dinner coffee cups. One bore the arms of
Coventry in colors; another had the seal of St. John's College, Oxford;
one was from Edinburgh and another from Paris. They looked aristocratic.
I laid them out in a row and at the end of the row sat the proletarian,
forlorn and battered--Anna's old tea-cup.

"What did you pay for this?" asked the inspector as he touched it
contemptuously with his official toe.

"Never mind what I paid for it," I replied, "it's valued at a million
dollars!" The officer laughed and I think the other cups laughed also,
but they were not contemptuous; they were simply jealous.

Leisurely I went over the dresser, noting the new chips and cracks,
handling them, maybe