"We must see first--it will be only if we have to come to it.
There are things," she had gone on, "that father puts away--the
bigger and more cumbrous of course, which he stores, has already
stored in masses, here and in Paris, in Italy, in Spain, in
warehouses, vaults, banks, safes, wonderful secret places. We've
been like a pair of pirates--positively stage pirates, the sort
who wink at each other and say 'Ha-ha!' when they come to where
their treasure is buried. Ours is buried pretty well everywhere--
except what we like to see, what we travel with and have about
us. These, the smaller pieces, are the things we take out and
arrange as we can, to make the hotels we stay at and the houses
we hire a little less ugly. Of course it's a danger, and we have
to keep watch. But father loves a fine piece, loves, as he says,
the good of it, and it's for the company of some of his things
that he's willing to run his risks. And we've had extraordinary
luck"--Maggie had made that point; "we've never lost anything
yet. And the finest objects are often the smallest. Values, in
lots of cases, you must know, have nothing to do with size. But
there's nothing, however tiny," she had wound up, "that we've
missed."

"I like the class," he had laughed for this, "in which you place
me! I shall be one of the little pieces that you unpack at the
hotels, or at the worst in the hired houses, like this wonderful
one, and put out with the family photographs and the new
magazines. But it's something not to be so big that I have to be
buried."

"Oh," she had returned, "you shall not be buried, my dear, till
you're dead. Unless indeed you call it burial to go to American