There was no greeting, no reference to their having met before.  One might have supposed that their last talk had been uninterrupted.

“It vas all in a lump, and der vas a soup tureen in de lot—­I don’t know vot I did vid it.  I tink dat’s up-stairs.  Mike, you go up and ask my little girl Masie if she can find dot big tureen vich I bought from old Mrs. Blobbs who keeps dot old-clothes place on Second Avenue.  And you vas sure about dis china?”

“Very sure.”

“How do you know?”

“From the mark.”

“Vot’s it vorth?”

“The cups and saucers would bring about two pounds apiece in London.  If there were a full dozen they would bring a matter of fifteen or twenty pounds—­ some hundred dollars of your money.”

Kling stepped nearer and peered intently at the
stranger.  “You give dot for dem?”

The man’s eyebrows narrowed.  “I am not buying cups at present,” he answered, with quiet dignity, “but they are worth what I tell you.

“And now tell me vot dis tureen is vorth?” he asked as Mike reappeared and set it on the table, backing away with the remark that he’d go now, Mrs. Cleary would be wantin’ him.  Kling moved the relic toward the expert for closer examination.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Kling; I can see it.  All I can say is that the old lady must have known better days and must have been terribly poor to have parted with it.  What, if I may ask, did you pay her for this?”

“Two dollars.  Vas it too much?” The stranger had suddenly become an important personage.

“No—­too little.  It is old Lowestoft, and”—­here he took the lid from the dealer’s hand—­“yes, without a crack or blemish—­yes, old Lowestoft—­worth, I should say, ten or more pounds.  They are giving large sums for these things in London.  Perhaps you have not made a specialty of china.”

Otto had now forgotten the tureen and was scrutinizing the speaker, wondering what kind of a man he really was—­this fellow who looked and spoke like a person of position, knew the value of curios at sight, and yet who had confessed the night before to being behind with his rent and anxious to sell his belongings to keep off the street.  Then the doubt, universal in the minds of second-hand dealers, arose.  “Come along vid me and tell me some more.  Vot is dot chair?” and he drew out a freshly varnished relic of better days.

The man seized the chair by the back, canted it to see all sides of it, and was about to give his decision when the laughter of a child and the sharp, quick bark of a dog caused him to pause and raise his head.  A white fox-terrier with a clothes-pin tail, two scissored ears, and two restless, shoe-button eyes, peering through button-hole lids, followed by a little girl ten or twelve years of age, was regarding him suspiciously.

“He won’t hurt you,” cried the child.  “Come back, you naughty Fudge!”