It was all right about the bowl. She never noticed the difference. I
was married to the old gentleman, whose name was Fytche, the next
week by special licence at St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, Queen Victoria
Street, which is very near that beautiful glass and china shop where
I had tried to match the bowl; and my aunt died three months later
and left me everything. Sarah married in quite a poor way. That
quinsy of hers cost her dear.
Mr. Fytche was very well off, and I should have liked living at his
house well enough if it hadn't been for the china. The house was
cram full of it, and he could think of nothing else. No more going
out to dinner; no amusements; nothing as a girl like me had a right
to look for. So one day I told him straight out I thought he had
better give up collecting and sell aunt's things, and we would buy a
nice little place in the country with the money.
'But, my dear,' he said, 'you can't sell your aunt's china. She left
it stated expressly in her will.'
And he rubbed his hands and chuckled, for he thought he had got me
there.
'No, but you can,' I said, 'the china is yours now. I know enough
about law to know that; and you can sell it, and you shall.'
And so he did, whether it was law or not, for you can make a man do
anything if you only give your mind to it and take your time and
keep all on. It was called the great Fytche sale, and I made him pay
the money he got for it into the bank; and when he died I bought a
snug little farm with it, and married a young man that I had had in
my eye long before I had heard of Mr. Fytche.
And we are very comfortably off, and not a bit of china in the house
that's more than twenty years old, so that whatever's broke can be
easy replaced.
As for his collection, which would have brought me in thousands of
pounds, they say, I have to own he had the better of me there, for
he left it by will to the South Kensington Museum.
BARRING THE WAY
I DON'T know how she could have done it. I couldn't have done it
myself. At least, I don't think so. But being lame and small, and
not noticeable anyhow, I had never any temptation, so I can't judge
those that have.
Ellen was tall and a slight figure, and as pretty as a picture in
her Sunday clothes, and prettier than any picture on a working day,
with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulder and the colour in her
face like a rose, and her brown, hair all twisted up rough anyhow;
and, of course, she was much sought after and flattered. But I
couldn't have done it myself, I think, even if I had been sought
after twice as much and twice as handsome. No, I couldn't, not after
the doctor had said that father's heart was weak, and any sudden
shock might bring an end to him.
But, oh! poor dear, she was my sister--my own only sister--and it's
not the time now to be hard on her, and she where she is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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