"I don't blame you, Mr. Alex. If our wives would cook, as once they did, we wouldn't have to act so childishly when we travel."

The platter was emptied and when the farmer's wife turned to go back to her work, Mr. Fabian and Mr. Ashby insisted upon carrying the pail and dipper, to the amazement of those in the car. Polly understood and nudged Eleanor to follow, too.

"This is a very fine old dish, madam," remarked Mr. Ashby.

"Oh yes, it's a bit of old blue I've had in the kitchen for years. I remember how mother used to heap up this same plate with scones, for us chillern," replied the woman, smiling at the platter.

"Are there many such pieces of blue in this section of the country?"

asked Mr. Fabian, while Polly and her companions listened eagerly for the reply.

"Summat; but my gude mon stacked our'n up in the back-shed when us wanted to use the front cupboard for my new chiny."

"Would you like to sell it?" was Mr. Ashby's tense query.

"D'ye think it would be wuth summat? I' do be thinking of laying by a few bits, this year, to buy us a wool carpet."

"Perhaps we will buy some pieces and pay you as much as anyone else you might meet," suggested Mr. Fabian.

As they entered the low-ceiled room of the cottage, the woman said: "Come out back and we won't have to carry so far to the front room."

She went through a tiny door that opened to the small lean-to, and then began taking all sorts of old dishes from the corner cupboard that her husband had constructed to hold the acc.u.mulation of generations. As the collectors saw choice pieces so carelessly handled they held their breaths in dread.

"Now this old blue belonged to my gran'faither afore it come down to us.

He, and my faither after him, lived on this same farm. Us had no son so the home come to me as eldest of the family."

As she spoke, the woman carried armfuls of dishes out to the table in the middle of the room. Some was worthless trash, but there were several pieces of rare Staffordshire, and some fine bits of old l.u.s.tre-ware. In the last armful she carried to the table, were some valuable Wedgwood jugs and bowls.

"Us got an old pink set, in the front room, but us don' use it now that us got a fine new chiny set," said the woman, turning to go for a sample of the pink ware.

"You pick out what you want here, and I'll go and see if the pink is genuine pink Staffordshire," whispered Mr. Ashby.

So Mr. Fabian soon set aside all the real good pieces on the table, and in so doing noticed the table itself.

"Why!" gasped he to Polly, "I verily believe this is the real Hepplewhite!"

Instantly he began a close examination of it, and smiled as he examined.

"With careful restoring you would have as fine a Hepplewhite as any in America," he said to Polly.

"Oh, then do let us take it!" exclaimed Polly, eagerly.

The table started them examining other broken down, or criminally painted, objects of furniture in the shed, and when Mr. Ashby returned, carrying a plate of pink Staffordshire, those who had remained behind in the shed were greatly elated over something.

"Oh, Mr. Ashby! just see what we found!" cried Polly.

"While you were away I discovered a Hepplewhite table, Ashby," explained Mr. Fabian. "And Polly got the girls to help remove all the paint-pots and trash from this bureau to make sure it was what she thought. Look!"

Mr. Ashby was taken over to the little bureau which had been used for a catch-all for years. Its drawers were over-flowing with rags and garden-tools, but nothing could hide the true lines of a genuine Sheraton piece.

"Well I never! To think such a gem should be so treated!" murmured Mr.

Ashby.

The others laughed delightedly at his amazement. But the owner now joined them again, and Mr. Fabian began bargaining.

"Are you satisfied with the prices paid you for the old china?" asked he, as an introduction to further dealing.

"Oh my! Us begin to see that wool carpet," laughed she.

"Would you sell this old table and bureau?" continued he.

"Them! I should say so!" retorted she, emphatically.

Instantly a price was offered and eagerly accepted between the two, and the table and bureau became the property of Polly and Eleanor. As Mr.

Ashby said: "The basis of your business-to-come."

Dodo had found some old bra.s.s candlesticks and a china group that proved to be old Dresden. These she hugged tightly as they all left the cottage followed by the blessings of the woman.

"My goodness! see what's coming?" laughed Jimmy, as he watched the five collectors file down the pathway, each one loaded with china.

"Where do you expect us to sit?" added Mrs. Fabian.

"On the running-board, to be sure," retorted her husband.

"Yes, because this fine blue takes precedence over modern objects, even though they be mortals," chuckled Mr. Ashby.

"You-all just ought to see the pink set Mr. Ashby got!" exclaimed Dodo, intensely interested in this quest of the antique.

Mrs. Alexander noted the bright eyes and flushed face, and determined to keep Dodo away from such dangerous interests.

"And the old table and bureau that Nolla and I got for a song!" cried Polly, also highly pleased with the purchases.

"Best of all, that good woman is so happy to know she is able to get the 'wool carpet' she has wanted for years, that her blessings will travel with us for many a year to come," added Mr. Fabian, turning to wave his hand at the farmer's wife as she stood in the doorway waving her ap.r.o.n at the tourists.

After the dishes were safely stowed away, Angela was induced to give her place, in the first car, to Mr. Fabian, so that he could talk to the other girls about the relative values of china.

Angela took no interest in these matters, so she willingly climbed in with the elders in the second car; and Mr. Fabian began a dissertation on blue, pink and brown Staffordshire; gold, silver, and bronze, or copper l.u.s.tre-ware; Wedgwood, Derby, and Worcester ware, and salt-glaze-which was finest of all when it was genuine antique.

Jimmy had grown very impatient while waiting at the farmhouse and when Angela exchanged seats with Mr. Fabian to permit him to lecture the girls on china, the young man frowned. Finally he became so irritated at what he considered "bally mush," and not being able to flirt with Ruth who sat in the back seat, he ran the car through all the ruts and over all the rocks he found in the way. This shook up the pa.s.sengers uncomfortably and interrupted the flow of eloquence from Mr. Fabian. But he and his girls were so absorbed in the subject that they never dreamed the roughness of the road could have been avoided by discontented Jimmy.

Angela, sitting beside Mrs. Alexander, made the most of her opportunity.

She managed to ferret out just how much money Dodo would inherit, and what Mrs. Alexander might be persuaded to do for an acceptable husband for the girl. So cleverly was this information secured that the informer failed to realize she was being "put through the third degree."

Angela was a sweet pretty girl but had experienced so many unpleasant sacrifices since her father's tremendous losses that she had grown callous to all higher feelings. Her sole ambition, now, was to secure _her_ future either by Jimmy's marriage to money, or by her own escape from the bondage of poverty by marriage.

She fully realized that most desirable young men in England were in the same position as her father and brother, hence she had not much choice of escape that way. But with Jimmy-upon him rested the salvation of the family and its debts.

Mr. Fabian was still talking "antiques" when the cars reached Gloucester, so Jimmy steered through, by way of side streets, and then drove through the famous cotswolds, on the way to Worcester.

A few miles this side of Worcester, Polly spied a very old-looking house standing under a group of giant trees which must have been hundreds of years old.