“I hope I didn’t keep my mouth open and snore.”

“Oh, no, your lips were gently apart and you breathed regularly as they would say in books!”

Marjorie laughed, released Miss Prudence from the tight clasp and went back to her chair.

“You received my note and the plate,” she said anxiously.

“Both in perfect preservation.  There was not one extra crack in the plate, it was several hours older than when it left your hands, but that only increases its value.”

“And did you think I was dreadful not to confess before?” asked Marjorie, tremulously.

“I thought you were dreadful to run away from me instead of to me.”

“I was so sorry; I wanted to get something else before you knew about it.  Did you miss it?”

“I missed something in the room, I could not decide what it was.”

“Will the plate do, do you think?  Is it handsome enough?”

“It is old enough, that is all the question.  Do you know all about Holland when that plate first came into existence?”

“No; I only know there was a Holland.”

“That plate will be a good point to begin with.  You and I will study up Holland some day.  I wonder what you know about it now.”

“Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland two hundred years ago?”

“No; I’m afraid not.  I don’t believe she knows more than you do about it.  But she will delight in the plate.  Which reminds me, your uncle has promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me.  And in its mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever.  I cannot say that George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren when I show it to them fifty years hence.  Unto them I will discover—­not a swan’s nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years ago.”

“It will be a hundred and fifty years old then,” returned Marjorie, seriously, “and I think,” she added rebukingly, “that you were building castles then.”

“I had you and the pitcher for the foundation,” said Miss Prudence, in a tone of mock humility.

“Don’t you think—­” Marjorie’s face had a world of suggestion in it—­“that ‘The Swan’s Nest’ is bad influence for girls?  Little Ellie sits alone and builds castles about her lover, even his horse is ’shod in silver, housed in azure’ and a thousand serfs do call him master, and he says ‘O, Love, I love but thee.’”

“But all she looks forward to is showing him the swan’s nest among the reeds!  And when she goes home, around a mile, as she did daily, lo, the wild swan had deserted and a rat had gnawed the reeds.  That was the end of her fine castle!”

“’If she found the lover, ever,
  Sooth, I know not, but I know
She could never show him, never,
  That swan’s nest among the reeds,’”