she dives under the brown paper hatches and resurrects a pink plate, suffering from yaller jaundice, with the picture of a pink boy, wearing curls and a monkey-jacket, holding hands with a pink girl with pointed feet.
"Ain't it perfectly lovely?" says she, waving the outrage in front of the Duchess. "A ginuwine Hall nappy! And in SUCH condition!"
"Why," says the Duchess, "I didn't know you were interested in antiques."
"I dote on 'em," comes back the Dowager, and "my daughter" owned up that she "adored" 'em.
"If you knew," continues Mrs. Thompson, "how I've planned and contrived to get this treasure. I've schemed--My! my! My daughter says she's actually ashamed of me. Oh, no! I can't tell even you where I got it. All's fair in love and collecting, you know, and there are more gems where this came from."
She laughed and "my daughter" laughed, and the Duchess and "Irene dear" laughed, too, and said the plate was "SO quaint," and all that, but you could fairly hear 'em turn green with jealousy. It didn't need a spyglass to see that they wouldn't ride easy at their own moorings till THEY'D landed a treasure or two--probably two.
And sure enough, in a couple of days they bore down on the Thompsons, all sail set and colors flying. They had a pair of plates that for ugliness and price knocked the "ginuwine Hall nappy" higher 'n the main truck. And the way they crowed and bragged about their "finds" wa'n't fit to put in the log. The Dowager and "my daughter" left that dinner table trembling all over.
Well, you can see how a v'yage would end that commenced that way. The Dowager and Barbara would scour the neighborhood and capture more prizes, and the Duchess and her tribe would get busy and go 'em one better. That's one sure p'int about the collecting business--it'll stir up a fight quicker'n anything I know of, except maybe a good looking bachelor minister. The female Thompsons and Smalls was "my dear-in'" each other more'n ever, but there was a chill setting in round them piazza thrones, and some of the sarcastic remarks that was casually hove out by the bosom friends was pretty nigh sharp enough to shave with. As for Milo and Eddie, they still smoked together behind the barn, but the atmosphere on the quarter-deck was affecting the fo'castle and there wa'n't quite so many "old mans" and "dear boys" as there used to was. There was a general white frost coming, and you didn't need an Old Farmer's Almanac to prove it.
The spell of weather developed sudden. One evening me and Cap'n Jonadab and Peter T. was having a confab by the steps of the billiard-room, when Milo beats up from around the corner. He was smiling as a basket of chips.
"Hello!" hails Peter T. cordial. "You look as if you'd had money left you. Any one else remembered in the will?" he says.
Milo laughed all over. "Well, well," says he, "I AM feeling pretty good. Made a ten-strike with Mrs. T. this afternoon for sure.
"That so?" says Peter. "What's up? Hooked a prince?"
A friend of "my daughter's" over at Newport had got engaged to a mandarin or a count or something 'nother, and the Dowager had been preaching kind of eloquent concerning the shortness of the nobility crop round Wellmouth.
"No," says Milo, laughing again. "Nothing like that. But I have got hold of that antique davenport she's been dying to capture."
One of the boarders at the hotel over to Harniss had been out antiquing a week or so afore and had bagged a contraption which answered to the name of a "ginuwine Sheriton davenport." The dowager heard of it, and ever since she'd been remarking that some people had husbands who cared enough for their wives to find things that pleased 'em. She wished she was lucky enough to have that kind of a man; but no, SHE had to depend on herself, and etcetery and so forth. Maybe you've heard sermons similar.
So we was glad for Milo and said so. Likewise we wanted to know where he found the davenport.
"Why, up here in the woods," says Milo, "at the house of a queer old stick, name of Rogers. I forget his front name--'twas longer'n the davenport."
"Not Adoniram Rogers?" says Cap'n Jonadab, wondering.
"That's him," says Thompson.
Now, I knew Adoniram Rogers. His house was old enough, Lord knows; but that a feller with a nose for a bargain like his should have hung on to a salable piece of dunnage so long as this seemed 'most too tough to believe.
"Well, I swan to man!" says I. "Adoniram Rogers! Have you seen the--the davenport thing?"
"Sure I've seen it!" says Milo. "I ain't much of a jedge, and of course I couldn't question Rogers too much for fear he'd stick on the price. But it's an old davenport, and it's got Sheriton lines and I've got the refusal of it till to-morrow, when Mrs. T's going up to inspect."
"Told Small yet?" asked Peter T., winking on the side to me and Jonadab.
Milo looked scared. "Goodness! No," says he. "And don't you tell him neither. His wife's davenport hunting too."
"You say you've got the refusal of it?" says I. "Well, I know Adoniram Rogers, and if _I_ was dickering with him I'd buy the thing first and get the refusal of it afterwards. You hear ME?"
"Is that so?" repeats Milo. "Slippery, is he? I'll take my wife up there first thing in the morning."
He walked off looking worried, and his tops'ls hadn't much more'n sunk in the offing afore who should walk out of the billiard room behind us but Eddie Small.
"Brown," says he to Peter T., "I want you to have a horse and buggy harnessed up for me right off. Mrs. Small and I are going for a little drive to--to--over to Orham," he says.
'Twas a mean, black night for a drive as fur as Orham and Peter looked surprised. He started to say something, then swallered it down, and told Eddie he'd see to the harnessing. When Small was out of sight, I says:
"You don't cal'late he heard what Milo was telling, do you, Peter?" says I.
Peter T. shook his head and winked, first at Jonadab and then at me.
And the next day there was the dickens to pay because Eddie and the Duchess had driven up to Rogers' the night afore and had bought the davenport, refusal and all, for twenty dollars more'n Milo offered for it.
Adoniram brought it down that forenoon and all hands and the cook was on the hurricane deck to man the yards. 'Twas a wonder them boarders didn't turn out the band and fire salutes. Such ohs and ahs! 'Twan't nothing but a ratty old cripple of a sofy, with one leg carried away and most of the canvas in ribbons, but four men lugged it up the steps and the careful way they handled it made you think the Old Home House was a receiving tomb and they was laying in the dear departed.
'Twas set down on the piazza and then the friends had a chance to view the remains. The Duchess and "Irene dear" gurgled and gushed and received congratulations. Eddie stood around and tried to look modest as was possible under the circumstances. The Dowager sailed over, tilted her nose up to the foretop, remarked "Humph"' through it and come about and stood at the other end of the porch. "My daughter" follers in her wake, observes "Humph!" likewise and makes for blue water. Milo comes over and looks at Eddie.
"Well?" says Small. "What do you think of it?"
"Never mind what I think of IT," answers Thompson, through his teeth. "Shall I tell you what I think of YOU?"
I thought for a minute that hostilities was going to begin, but they didn't. The women was the real battleships in that fleet, the men wa'n't nothing but transports. Milo and Eddie just glared at each other and sheered off, and the "ginuwine Sheriton" was lugged into the sepulchre, meaning the trunk-room aloft in the hotel.
And after that the cold around the thrones was so fierce we had to move the thermometer, and we had to give the families separate tables in the dining-room so's the milk wouldn't freeze. You see the pitcher set right between 'em, and--Oh! I didn't expect you'd believe it.