“We will!” promised Bert, and Nan nodded her head in agreement with him.  Miss Pompret handed over the letter, which was in a large envelope.  Nan and Bert were soon at the post-office with it.

The white-haired lady was waiting for them on the porch as they came back along the street.

“Won’t you come in, just for a minute?” she asked, smiling kindly at them.  “My maid has just baked a chocolate cake, and I don’t believe your mother would mind if you each had a piece.”

“Oh, no’m—­she wouldn’t mind at all!” said Bert quickly.

“We like chocolate cake,” said Nan, “but we didn’t go to the post-office for that!”

“Bless your heart, child, I know you didn’t!” laughed their new friend.  “Please come in!”

The chocolate cake was all Bert and Nan hoped it would be, and besides that Miss Pompret set out on the table for them each a glass of milk.  They looked around the beautiful but old-fashioned room, noting the dark mahogany furniture, the cut glass on the side-board, and, over in one corner, a glass cupboard, through the clear doors of which could be seen some china dishes.

Miss Pompret saw Nan looking at this set of china, and the elderly lady smiled as she said: 

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes,” said Nan, softly.  “I love pretty dishes.”

“And these are my greatest treasure,” said Miss Pompret.  “I am very proud of them.  They have been in my family over a hundred years.  But there is a sad story about it—­a very sad story about the old Pompret china.”  And the lady’s face clouded.

“Did somebody break it?” asked Bert.  Once he had broken a plate of which his mother was very proud, and he remembered how sad she felt.

“No, my china wasn’t broken,” said Miss Pompret.  “In fact, there is a sort of mystery about it.”

“Oh, please tell me!” begged Nan.  “I like nice dishes and I like stories.”

She and Bert looked at the closet of choice china dishes.  Children though they were, they could see that the plates, cups, saucers and other dishes were not like the kind set on their table every day.

What could Miss Pompret mean about a “mystery” connected with her set of china?

CHAPTER V

“What A lot of money!”

Bert and Nan sat up very straight on the chairs in Miss Pompret’s dining room, and looked first at her and then at the china closet with its shiny, glass doors.  Miss Pompret sat up very straight, too, in her chair, and she, also, looked first from Nan and Bert to the wonderful china, which seemed made partly of egg shells, so fine it was and pretty.

Miss Pompret’s dining room was one in which it seemed every one had to sit up straight, and in which every chair had to be in just the right place, where the table legs must keep very straight, too, and where not even a corner of a rug dared to be turned up.  In fact it was a very straight, old-fashioned but very beautiful dining room, and Miss Pompret herself was an old-fashioned but beautiful lady.