"Pusserve jugs," she said. "Pusserve or pickle. Cain't tell which."

"You can in the kitchen," Julia said, with pointed suggestion. "Of course you can't in the dark."

But still Mrs. Silver snatched at the fleeting moment and did not go. "Tell by smellin' 'em," she murmured, seemingly to herself.

With ease she unscrewed the top of one of the jars; then held the open jar to her nose. "Don't smell to me exackly like no pusserves," she said. "Nor yit like no pickles. Don't smell to me—" She hesitated, sniffed the jar again, and then inquired in a voice quickly grown anxious: "Whut is all thishere in thishere jug? Seem like to me—"

But here she interrupted herself to utter a muffled exclamation, not coherent. Instantly she added some words suitable to religious observances, but in a voice of passion. At the same time, with a fine gesture, she hurled the jar and the basket from her, and both came in contact with the wall, not far away, with a sound of breakage.

"Why, what—" Julia began. "Kitty Silver, are you crazy?"

But Kitty Silver was moving hurriedly toward the open front door, where appeared, at that moment, Mr. Atwater in his most irascible state of peculiarity.

He began: "What was that heathenish—"

Shouting, Mrs. Silver jostled by him, and, though she disappeared into the house, a trail of calamitous uproar marked her passage to the kitchen.

"What thing has happened?" Mr. Atwater demanded. "Is she—?"

His daughter interrupted him.

"Oh!" was all she said, and sped by him like a bit of blown thistledown, into the house. He grasped at her as she passed him; then suddenly he made other gestures, and, like Kitty Silver, used Jacobean phrases. But now there were no auditors, for Noble Dill and Newland Sanders, after thoughtlessly following a mutual and natural impulse to step over and examine the fallen basket, had both gone out to the street, where they lingered a while, then decided to go home.

... Later, that evening, Florence and Herbert remembered the c'lection; so they came for it, a mistake. Discovering the fragments upon the veranda, they made the much more important mistake of entering the house to demand an explanation, which they received immediately. It was delivered with so much vigour, indeed, that Florence was surprised and hurt. And yet, the most important of her dreamy wishes of the afternoon had been fulfilled: the c'lection had been useful to Noble Dill, for Mr. Atwater had smelled the smell of an Orduma cigarette and was just on the point of coming out to say some harsh things, when the c'lection interfered. And as Florence was really responsible for its having been in a position to interfere, so to say, she had actually in a manner protected her protégé and also shown some of that power of which she had boasted when she told him that sometimes she made members of her family "step around pretty lively."

Another of her wishes appeared to be on the way to fulfilment, too. She had hoped that something memorable might be done with the c'lection, and the interview with her grandfather, her Aunt Julia, and Kitty Silver seemed to leave this beyond doubt.