them would be suitable, even if there were time to
make one over. Never had the Old Lady so bitterly regretted her vanished
wealth.

"I've only two dollars in the house," she said, "and I've got to live on
that till the next day the egg pedlar comes round. Is there anything I
can sell--ANYTHING? Yes, yes, the grape jug!"

Up to this time, the Old Lady would as soon have thought of trying to
sell her head as the grape jug. The grape jug was two hundred years old
and had been in the Lloyd family ever since it was a jug at all. It was
a big, pot-bellied affair, festooned with pink-gilt grapes, and with a
verse of poetry printed on one side, and it had been given as a wedding
present to the Old Lady's great-grandmother. As long as the Old Lady
could remember it had sat on the top shelf in the cupboard in the
sitting-room wall, far too precious ever to be used.

Two years before, a woman who collected old china had explored
Spencervale, and, getting word of the grape jug, had boldly invaded
the old Lloyd place and offered to buy it. She never, to her dying day,
forgot the reception the Old Lady gave her; but, being wise in her
day and generation, she left her card, saying that if Miss Lloyd ever
changed her mind about selling the jug, she would find that she, the
aforesaid collector, had not changed hers about buying it. People who
make a hobby of heirloom china must meekly overlook snubs, and this
particular person had never seen anything she coveted so much as that
grape jug.

The Old Lady had torn the card to pieces; but she remembered the name
and address. She went to the cupboard and took down the beloved jug.

"I never thought to part with it," she said wistfully, "but Sylvia must
have a dress, and there is no other way. And, after all, when I'm gone,
who would there be to have it? Strangers would get it then--it might
as well go to them now. I'll have to go to town to-morrow morning, for
there's no time to lose if the party is Friday night. I haven't been to
town for ten years. I dread the thought of going, more than parting with
the jug. But for Sylvia's sake!"

It was all over Spencervale by the next morning that Old Lady Lloyd had
gone to town, carrying a carefully guarded box. Everybody wondered why
she went; most people supposed she had become too frightened to keep her
money in a black box below her bed, when there had been two burglaries
over at Carmody, and had taken it to the bank.

The Old Lady sough