Inside Miss Crevey’s stuffy little shop a woman customer kept insisting that she must have lilac ribbon two inches wide, although Miss Crevey told her that blue ribbon three inches wide, which Miss Crevey happened to have in stock, would be just as good, if not better. Jacqueline teetered impatiently from one foot to the other, while she waited for the end of the argument. The woman left at last in dudgeon, without buying so much as a paper of pins.

“Well, there’s no suitin’ some folks,” Miss Crevey muttered waspishly, and turned to Jacqueline. “Come now, what d’ye want, little girl? Speak up! I won’t have no young ones hangin’ round in here, handlin’ things and askin’ questions. Ain’t you got a tongue?”

Most certainly Jacqueline had, and she used it, the moment Miss Crevey stopped for breath and gave her half a chance.

“If you please,” she said, “I want to know the price of the cup and saucer on the shelf in the window.”

Miss Crevey fixed her eyes on a dinky little “Souvenir of Longmeadow” that might have graced a doll’s tea table.

“Fifty cents,” she said, “but you’d better buy the match box and get more for your money.”

“I didn’t mean that one,” protested Jacqueline. “I meant the one with green dragons, there on the shelf.”

“That old cup?”

“Yes, please. How much is it?”

Miss Crevey looked at her with hostile eyes.

“That’s more ’n you can pay,” she said flatly. “It’s worth five dollars, Mrs. Enos Trowbridge told me—five dollars, if it’s worth a cent. Run along now! I can’t waste my time tellin’ you the price of everything in the store.”

“I haven’t asked the price of everything,” Jacqueline retorted. “I only asked about the green-dragon cup. Let me look at it, will you please?”

So loftily did she speak, and so sure did she seem of herself, that Miss Crevey took the cup and saucer from the shelf although she grumbled a little as she did so.

“There they be!” she said, as she set them on the counter. “Don’t you go droppin’ them now!”

Luckily at that moment a young girl from upstreet stepped in, to buy a piece of tape, and some white hooks and eyes (she had to be contented with black) and some orange twist, though she finally took yellow. While Miss Crevey was making these small sales, Jacqueline had time to examine the dragon cup and saucer at leisure. Yes, they were of identically the same pattern as Grandma’s cups and saucers that were broken. Jacqueline couldn’t be mistaken. She had washed and dried them too often. Aunt Martha had told her that such china couldn’t be had now for love nor money, but here it was, the very cup she wanted—Grandma’s cup!

The screen door slammed as the young girl went out, not too well pleased, it would seem, with her makeshift purchases.

“Well!” said Miss Crevey briskly. “If you’re through playin’ with that cup and saucer, I’ll just set ’em up out o’ harm’s way.”

“I—I want to buy them,” faltered Jacqueline.

“Got five dollars handy?” challenged Miss Crevey.

Jacqueline swallowed and stared hard at the precious cup, so that she need not meet Miss Crevey’s gimlet eyes. Oh, if only she had some of the money that she had spent so carelessly at home and at school! Why, she had often given a five-dollar bill for a box of candy, and got back with it only a few bits of silver—chicken-feed, she had liked to call them grandly. If only she had one of those bills now! If only she could go home proudly, with Grandma’s cup!

“Make up your mind!” urged the implacable Miss Crevey. “Take it or leave it—I can’t wait all day.”

Jacqueline felt herself backed against the wall. She must do something, and do it quickly, or the precious cup and saucer would go back upon the shelf, and then as likely as not they would be snapped up next minute by some other customer and lost to Grandma forever. She could almost see the entire town of Longmeadow, charging into the shop to buy that cup, and nothing but that cup.

“Hold on!” she said, and she was thinking fast. “Couldn’t you—trust me? I’ll have the money in September, sure.”

Of course she would! Even if Caroline and the Gildersleeves didn’t get back in time for school, as Eleanor Trowbridge prophesied, Aunt Edie and Uncle Jimmie were due in September.

Miss Crevey looked at her coldly. Oh, how conscious Jacqueline grew of the scantiness and shabbiness of her faded gingham! She blushed, and was angry at herself for blushing, and so blushed all the harder.

“Where d’ye expect to get the money?” Miss Crevey shot the words from her thin lips.

“I’m eleven in September,” Jacqueline said truthfully. “And I have a pretend-aunt that always gives me money on my birthday, and she will this time.”

“Well, when you get the money,” Miss Crevey spoke like one conferring a great favor, “I’ll let you have the cup and saucer.”

“Will you keep them for me till I get the money?” asked Jacqueline desperately.

“Why of course I will,” cried Miss Crevey heartily, “unless somebody comes along that’ll pay me spot cash for them.”

The tears of disappointment rose to Jacqueline’s eyes. She blinked them rapidly away. She must not let this hateful woman see her cry. But she was so sorry for Grandma—and so sorry for herself! She remembered how hopefully she had dressed for the little trip to Longmeadow, only an hour ago—how she had made herself so extra neat, with a hair ribbon, too—the look of the upper drawer, as she tossed its contents over—handkerchiefs, stockings, underwear—a Japanese lacquer box.

Jacqueline caught her breath.

“Look here!” she spoke, as one inspired. “If I brought you something worth more than five dollars and let you keep it till September when I shall have some money—then would you let me have the cup and saucer and take them home—right now?”

Miss Crevey pursed her lips.

“What d’ye mean by something?” she asked stabbingly.

Jacqueline’s heart was beating fast.

“There’s a pin,” she said, “and there’s a pearl in it—or there’s gold beads—a chain of them. I know gold beads are worth a lot more than five dollars. Oh, couldn’t you take them?”

“How do I know till I see them?” snapped Miss Crevey. “You bring ’em in some day—then we’ll talk business.”

Jacqueline drew a long breath.

“I’m going to go and get them right straight off,” she said, “and don’t you sell that cup and saucer till I come back.”

Strange though it may seem to you, it didn’t enter Jacqueline’s head that she was doing a dreadful thing in taking Caroline’s precious keepsakes to use as a pledge. In a half-formed way she felt that Caroline, by going off to the seashore, had brought this trouble upon her, and so was bound to help her out, in any way she could. She felt, too, that the fact that Grandma was really a relation of Caroline’s, not of hers, made the whole arrangement perfectly fair.

Still, Jacqueline might have seen her conduct in a different light, if she had taken time to sleep upon it. But she took no time. For luck played into her hand in a breathlessly amazing fashion. When she burst out of Miss Crevey’s shop, with a crazy idea of running clear to the farm and back, before Ralph got to the Post Office at five o’clock, whom should she see, heading down the street toward his home in the Meadows, but friendly Mr. Griswold!

Shrieking like a lost soul, Jacqueline sprinted after him, and fortunately she made him hear. A moment later she was seated at his side in his ramshackle, blessed old car. A short half-hour later, with warnings to Nellie never to tell, she was creeping up the stairs to their old room, so paddy-pawed that Aunt Martha, busy changing Grandma’s sheets, behind the closed doors of the parlor, never heard a sound.

Without pausing one moment to think, she opened the lacquer box and took out the string of gold beads. She knotted them safely in the corner of a clean pocket handkerchief, and quietly as she had entered, slipped out of the house again.

She ran part of the long, dusty road back to the village. Suppose she should come too late—suppose she should find the cup already sold—suppose oh! suppose Miss Crevey refused to keep to the bargain! But none of these dreadful things came to pass. When she panted into the close little shop, she found the dragon cup and saucer still in the window, and she found Miss Crevey mindful of the agreement.

Shrewdly Miss Crevey examined the beads.

“Be they yours?” she asked suspiciously.

“Heirlooms,” stammered Jacqueline, and then dodged the subject. “I know they’re worth more than five dollars.”

“Hm!” sniffed Miss Crevey. She sounded noncommittal enough, but she put the beads into the drawer of an old secretary behind the counter, and turned the key upon them. Then she wrapped the cup and saucer carefully in old newspapers, and even, for greater safety, packed them in a large old button box.

“Don’t ye break ’em now!” she cautioned.

Jacqueline didn’t. She had broken enough dragon china, she felt, to last her for a lifetime. She climbed into the car beside Ralph, at five o’clock, as circumspectly as if it were a baby that she held in her arms. She clambered out again at the kitchen door of the farm, with equal care.

“Aunt Martha!” she cried gaspingly. “Aunt Martha! See what I’ve got. I told you I would. For Grandma!”

With hands that shook with eagerness, Jacqueline unwrapped the cup and saucer, and for once she saw Aunt Martha stand (in Grandma’s phrase!) “flabbergasted.”

“For the land sake, Jackie!” Aunt Martha finally got her breath. “Wherever in the world did you dig up that old china?”

“I found it—in Miss Crevey’s shop.”

“Jackie! You never got it for nothing!”

“My pretend-aunt will send me some money on my birthday.” Jacqueline spoke fast. “I’ll pay Miss Crevey then. It’s all right, Aunt Martha. Honest, it is.”

Aunt Martha handled the cup and saucer almost reverently.

“Seems like a miracle,” she said, in a hushed voice. “I don’t mind telling you now, Jackie, we were worried to death because Grandma wouldn’t eat enough to keep up her strength, but now—why, when she sees her own old cup——”

She broke off, as if she couldn’t make the words come, and patted Jacqueline’s shoulder. From Aunt Martha that meant as much as a hug and a kiss from Aunt Edie.

“You’ve done a good day’s work, Jackie,” Aunt Martha found words again, as she turned away, and in the glow and triumph of the moment Jacqueline almost forgot that the gold beads that were Caroline’s lay under lock and key in Miss Crevey’s dusty secretary.