"Don't go too fast," Mr. Pollock smiled a little, "my collection is not of rare bibelots or valuable curios. Perhaps I'd better confide that I'm an eccentric. I gather things that, while of no real use to others, interest me. Now, what I want from you, and I am willing to pay a price for it, is the ten cent piece and the pin your aunt left to you in her will."

"What!" and Iris stared at him.

"I told you I was eccentric," he said, quietly, "more, I am a monomaniac, perhaps. But, also, I am a philosopher, and I know, that, as old Dr. Coates said, 'If you want to be happy, make a collection.' So I collect trifles, that, valueless in themselves, have a dramatic or historic interest; and I wish," he beamed with pride, "you could see my treasures! Why, I have a pencil that President Garfield carried in his pocket the day he was shot, and I have a shoelace that belonged to Charlie Ross, and----"

"What very strange things to collect!"

"Yes, they are. But they interest me. My business, hardware, is prosaic, and having an imaginative nature I let my fancy stray to these tragic mementoes of crime or disaster. I have a menu card from the Lusitania and a piece of queerly twisted gla.s.s from the Big Tom explosion. I look reverently upon the relics of sad disasters, and I value my collection as a numismatist his coins or an art collector his pictures."

"But it seems so absurd to ask for a common pin!"

"It may, but I would greatly like to have it. You see, it was an unusual gift. You didn't care for it, in fact, I have heard you indignantly spurned it."

"I did."

"They say, you expected a diamond pin, and your aunt left you a dime and pin! Is that so?"

"That is so."

"Pardon my smiling, but I think it's the funniest thing I ever heard.

And I would greatly like to have that pin and that dime."

"I'm sorry to say it's impossible, as I flung them away, and I've no idea where they landed."

"If you had them would you sell them to me?"

"I'd give them to you, if I had them! Why, it was merely an ordinary dime, not an old or rare coin. And the pin was a common one."

"Yes, I know that, but the idea, you see, the strange bequest--oh, I greatly desire to have one or the other of those two things! Can't we find them? Where did you throw them?"

"The dime I remember throwing out of the window. It must have fallen in the gra.s.s, you never could find that! The pin, I tossed on the floor, I think----"

"Has the room been swept since?"

"No, it has not. It should have been, but we have been so upset in the house----"

"I quite understand. I have a home and family, and I know what housekeeping means. However, since the room has not been swept, may I look around a bit in it?"

"It is this room, the room we are in. I sat right here, when I opened the box. I threw the dime out of that window, and I flung the pin over that way. I confess to a quick temper, and I was decidedly indignant.

Let us look for the pin, and if we find it you may have it."

Iris was pleasantly impressed by Mr. Pollock's manner and set him down in her mind as a ridiculous but good-natured lunatic--not really insane, of course, but a little hipped on the subject of mementoes.

At her permission, her visitor fell on hands and knees, and went quickly over the floor of the whole room. Iris with difficulty restrained her laughter at the nimble figure hopping about like a frog, and peering into corners and under the furniture.

She looked about also, but from the more dignified position of standing, or sitting on a chair or footstool.

The search grew interesting, and at last they considered it completed.

Their joint result was four pins and a needle.

Mr. Pollock presented a chagrined face.

"It may be any one of these," he said, ruefully looking at the four pins.

"That's true," Iris agreed. "But you may have them all, if you wish."

"Can't you judge which it is? See, this one is extra large."

"Then that's not it. I know it was of ordinary size. I scarcely looked at it, but I know that. Nor was it this crooked one. It was straight, I'm sure. But it may easily have been either of these other two."

"Suppose I take these two, then, and put them in my collection, with the surety that one or other is the identical pin."

"Do so, if you like," and Iris gave him a humoring smile. "Now, do you care to hunt for the dime? If you do, there's the lawn. But I won't help you, the sun is too warm."

"I think I won't hunt, or if I do, it will be only a little. I have this pin, and that is sufficient for a memento of this case. I am on my way to a house in Vermont, where I hope to get a b.u.t.ton that figured in a sensational tragedy up there. I thank you for being so kind and I would greatly prefer to pay you for this pin. I am not a poor man."

"Nonsense! I couldn't take money for a pin! You're more than welcome to it. And one of those two must be the one, for I'm sure there's no other pin on this floor."

"I'm sure of that, too. I looked most carefully. Good-by, Miss Clyde, and accept the grat.i.tude of a man who has a foolish but innocent fad."

Iris bowed a farewell at the front door, and returned to the living-room smiling at the funny adventure.

Almost involuntarily she began to look over the floor again, searching for pins.

"Have you lost anything?" asked Agnes, coming by.

"No; I've been looking for a pin."

"Want one, Miss Iris? Here's one."

"No, I don't want a pin, I mean--I don't want--a pin." Iris concluded her sentence rather lamely, for she had been half inclined to tell Agnes the story of her visitor, when something restrained her.

Perhaps it was Agnes' expression, for the maid said, "Were you looking for the pin Mrs. Pell left you?"

"Yes, I was," said Iris, astonished at the query.

"I have it," Agnes went on. "I picked it up the day you threw it away."

"For gracious' sake! Why did you do that?"

"Because--that's a lucky pin. Miss Iris, your aunt had that pin for years."

"I know it; it's been years in that box Mr. Chapin held for me."

"But before that. When I first came to live with Mrs. Pell, she always wore a pin stuck in the front of her dress. Once I took it out, it looked so silly, you know. She blew me up terribly, and said if I ever disturbed her things again she'd discharge me. And I gave it back to her--I had stuck it in my own dress--and she wore it for a short time more, and then she didn't wear it. Even then, I wouldn't have thought anything much about it, but a maid who lived here before I did, said she lost a pin once that had been in the waist of Mrs. Pell's gown and they had an awful time about it."

"Did they find it?"

"I don't know. I think not. I think she took another pin for a 'Luck.'