Those were wonderful days. For that was a house of surprises, a
house full of laid-by things. One never knew what one was going to
find. One morning it might be a Ridgway jug all delicate vine leaves
and faun heads, or an old blue-and-white English platter, or a piece
of fine salt-glaze. On the top shelf of a long-locked closet, pushed
back in the corner, you'd discover a full set of the most beautiful
sapphire glassware, and a pagoda work-box with ivory corners; and on
a lower shelf, wrapped in half a moth-eaten shawl, two glowing
luster jugs in proof condition. Mary Magdalen salvaged a fine china
sillabub stand, with little white-and-gold covered cups on it, from
a sooty box under a kitchen cupboard. A back drawer of the dusty
office desk yielded up half a dozen exquisite prints. And I'm sure
Alicia will remember even in heaven the ecstasy she experienced when
a battered bureau gave into her hands the adorable Bow figures of
Kitty Clive and Woodward the actor, she pink-and-white, petticoated
and furbelowed, lovely as when London went mad over her, and he
cocked-hatted and ruffled and dandified; and neither with so much as
the least littlest chip to mar their perfection.
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