"I guess yer right, miss. Ut sure seems foolish fer folks t' git mad about
jugs like you says. Wuz they empty, miss?"

"Empty!" repeated Muriel wonderingly, not understanding at once that her
visitor was unaware that the "jugs" men fought over were valued as art
treasures and not for their possible contents. Then she laughed merrily,
as only the mother of Shaver could laugh.

"Oh! Of course they're _empty!_ That does seem to make it sillier,
doesn't it? But they're like famous pictures, you know, or any beautiful
work of art that only happens occasionally. Perhaps it seems odd to you
that men can be so crazy about such things, but I suppose sometimes you
have wanted things very, very much, and--oh!"

She paused, plainly confused by her tactlessness in suggesting to a member
of his profession the extremities to which one may be led by covetousness.

"Yes, miss," he remarked hastily; and he rubbed his nose with the back of
his hand, and grinned indulgently as he realized the cause of her
embarrassment. It crossed his mind that she might be playing a trick of
some kind; that her story, which seemed to him wholly fantastic and not at
all like a chronicle of the acts of veritable human beings, was merely a
device for detaining him until help arrived. But he dismissed this
immediately as unworthy of one so pleasing, so beautiful, so perfectly
qualified to be the mother of Shaver!

"Well, just before luncheon, without telling my husband where I was going,
I ran away to papa's, hoping to persuade him to end this silly feud. I
spent the afternoon there and he was very unreasonable. He feels that Mr.