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
interfer