s were among them."

"Well, I'll wait and see yours," answered unsuspicious Anna. "If I like
it, I'll get one too. Now mind you show it to me first when you've
finished it."

As soon as school was dismissed, Silvia hurried through Atwood to the
store of Mr. Morris.

The clerk who came bowing to her was a young man for whom she had a
special dislike,--"a conceited idiot," she called him to her companions,
"with an offensive familiarity of manner." In reality, Tom Jordan was a
well-meaning young man, though rather silly, but his vanity and conceit
happened to jar upon the same marked characteristics in Miss Silvia.

"What shall I show you this evening, Miss Silvia?" rubbing his hands and
smiling blandly.

"Are none of the other clerks disengaged?" she asked, loftily.

The young man's smile faded away. "I'm afraid, Miss Morden, they're all
busy. Can I show you anything?"

"Have you any cuspadores among your new pottery?"

"What did you say?" asked Tom.

"I said cuspadores. I presume you know what they are."

Now Jordan didn't know any better than she what cuspadores are. But he,
too, had a reputation to support for knowing everything in his line of
business. He was not going to peril it at a counter full of gaping
customers by acknowledging his ignorance.

He would question her a little, to find out what it was.

He put his finger to his forehead, and shut his eyes, as if trying to
remember where the cuspadores were placed.

"What style do you wish? The fact is, there are so many different shapes
in vogue now."

"Oh, the most antique, of course. I doat on those queer antique things."

His head in a whirl, Tom rushed into the back room, leaving Silvia
conversing with some acquaintances who had come in. From the back room
he ran into an office where the book-keeper, who was lately from
Philadelphia, was absorbed over a column of figures.

"Ralston, what under the sun is a cuspadore?" he cried.

"It's a spittoon,--a spit-box,--you ninny! If you interrupt me again,
I'll shy mine at your head!"

"Whew!" whistled Tom. "Who'd have thought that 'toploftical' young miss,
with her airs and graces, used tobacco? I s'pose she rubs, or maybe she
smokes. One never knows, Ralston, what girls are up to."

"But I know what I'll be up to if you don't clear out!" cried the angry
book-keeper.

Tom rummaged the warehouse, and found a common earthenware spittoon,
which he dragged out in triumph.

"I wonder if she thin