. Mr. Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to
anything, no matter how ugly and silly, if only it was old.

He came in rubbing his hands, and very kind. He remembered us very well,
he said, and asked what he could do for us.

Oswald for once was dumb. He could not find words in which to own
himself the ass he had been.

But Alice was less delicately moulded. She said:

"Oh, if you please, we are most awfully sorry, and we hope you'll
forgive us, but we thought it would be such a pity for you and all the
other poor dear Antiquities to come all that way and then find nothing
Roman--so we put some pots and things in the barrow for you to find."

"So I perceived," said the President, stroking his white beard and
smiling most agreeably at us; "a harmless joke, my dear! Youth's the
season for jesting. There's no harm done--pray think no more about it.
It's very honorable of you to come and apologize, I'm sure."

His brow began to wear the furrowed, anxious look of one who would fain
be rid of his guests and get back to what he was doing before they
interrupted him.

Alice said, "We didn't come for that. It's _much_ worse. Those were two
_real_ true Roman jugs you took away; we put them there; they aren't
ours. We didn't know they were real Roman. We wanted to sell the
Antiquities--I mean Antiquaries--and we were sold ourselves."

"This is serious," said the gentleman. "I suppose you'd know the--the
'jugs' if you saw them again?"

"Anywhere," said Oswald, with the confidential rashness of one who does
not know what he is talking about.

Mr. Longchamps opened the door of a little room leading out of the one
we were in, and beckoned us to follow. We found ourselves amid shelves
and shelves of pottery of all sorts; and two whole shelves--small
ones--were filled with the sort of jug we wanted.

"Well," said the President, with a veiled, menacing sort of smile, like
a wicked cardinal, "which is it?"

Oswald said, "I don't know."

Alice said, "I should know if I had it in my hand."

The President patiently took the jugs down one after another, and Alice
tried to look inside them. And one after another she shook her head and
gave them back.

At last she said, "You didn't _wash_ them?"

Mr. Longchamps shuddered and said "No."

"Then," said Alice, "there is something written with lead-pencil inside
both the jugs. I wish I hadn't. I would rather you didn't read it. I
didn't know it would be a nice old gent