I told them that Mother and Aunt Celeste had much more than they needed in life, and it was hard to get anything new and different for them, as there were so many to give them presents, and that I liked to get something odd if I could.  The things they were crazy about were old silver and old jewelry, especially old settings, and it was hard to find them in our town, and I wondered if they could help me get a piece of silver like one of Miss Susanna’s pitchers for Mother, and a set of sapphires like Miss Araminta’s for Aunt Celeste.  Also I said I didn’t want to trouble them and I hoped they wouldn’t mind my asking them.

Miss Araminta said no indeed, she didn’t mind, and that she had got into the state of mind Miss Virginia Hill was in, and she wasn’t going to keep on keeping a lot of things that were no use just because they had belonged to long-dead grandmothers.  And while she wouldn’t go as far as Miss Virginia, who would sell every ancestor she had for a million dollars, she would part with some other things for much less, and if I wanted to buy the sapphire set (pin and ear-rings) she would be glad to sell them.  She would have to tell me, though, they had been her great-grandmother’s, and not her great-great’s, as the pearls were, and that she would take forty-five dollars for them, and if that was too much she would take forty.

I almost lost my breath at her good sense, not expecting it, but I told her it would be cheating if I paid less than seventy-five for them (I had calculated that it would take about that to get the lavender satin with things to match), and if she would get them for me I would take them right away, and I was awfully obliged to her, as it would be such a relief to get Aunt Celeste off my mind.  I admitted I didn’t always pay as much as seventy-five for her present (I usually give her a five-dollar one which Mother pays for), but Father wanted me to bring her something quaint from Twickenham if I could find it, and he would be delighted to know of the sapphires.

I fiddled along about other things for a moment or two and then I asked Miss Susanna if she would think me a very piggy person to want to buy one of those precious old silver pitchers of hers, as Mother would love so to have one of that pattern (Mother had never mentioned it, but I knew she would long for one of that pattern if she could see it), and I waited with terrible anxiousness in my heart and a hot face for her answer.  Miss Susanna’s got a lovely pinky color, and for a moment she didn’t say anything, and then Miss Araminta spoke for her and showed more sensibleness than I thought was in her.

“Why don’t you, Susanna?” she said, and nodded at her.  They are first cousins and very good friends.  “Why don’t you let the child have one of those old pitchers?  You have too much silver, anyhow, and with servants of the present day any sort of silver is too great a burden to be borne, much less ancestral sort.  Young people want to buy their own things, and reverence for the past is a thing of the past; and besides, you have no one to leave yours to except some one who won’t appreciate it.  Why don’t you let her have it?”