But he was sot on it, and so we went in and looked round, tryin’ to find sunthin’ that would suit her. There was lots and lots of things, but I couldn’t see a article that I thought she would want and told him so; there was some big platters with humbly faces painted on ’em, and bowls and vases and jars. One little bowl was marked “Anno Jubilee 1600,” and Josiah says, “Don’t you s’pose that would do, Samantha? S’posen Ann has used it, she haint hurt it, and it would be handy to feed the—”
Says I, “Josiah Allen, it don’t look half so well as bowls she has got by her now.”
“Well,” says he, “I could git it cheap, its bein’ so awful old, and I believe it would be as good for her, as a new one.”
“Well,” says I, “before you decide, less look round a little more.”
It does beat all how many things was marked Anno Domina; Josiah said he wondered what under the sun Ann wanted of so much jewelry and stuff, and he thought it looked extravagant in her.
Says he with a dreamy look “Mebby Ann would have left sunthin’ to our girl, if she had known she was named after her—as it were.”
Says I, “Josiah Allen don’t try to git off on that track.” Says I, “It is bad enough to buy second-handed jewelry without plottin’ round tryin’ to git it for nothin’.”
So finally he picked out a ring of carved stone, sardonic, I think I heerd it called, and says he: “this will be just as good for Tirzah Ann as sunthin’ that would cost a dollar or ten shillin’,” says he “I will give old Antique ten cents for it, and not try to beat him down. Do you s’pose the old man would ask any more for it?” says he, addressin’ a middle aged, iron grey man a standin’ near us. “He dug ’em out of old graves and ruins, I hear; they can’t be worth much to him.”
“You can learn the price from Signor Alessandro Castellani.”
“The gentleman who owns the collection, the head of the Italian Commission. There he is a comin’ this way now.” He was a good lookin’ chap, with a animated eager look to his face. And when he got up to us Josiah says to him, “How much is that little sardonic ring?”
Says he, in a pleasant way though sort o’ foreign in axent, “That ring sir, is eight hundred dollars.”
My pardner stood with his head bent forward, and his arms hangin’ down straight, in deep dumb founder. Finally he spoke, and says he in low agitated axents, “How much do you call the hull lot of old stuff worth?”