To this I had
looked forward all the summer, and I had measured with my
eye many a bit of furniture, and priced, in an unaffected
way, many an impossible second-hand finery, so that I
knew just what I could do and what I could not do.
My mother had always wanted a Banner stove. I knew
this, and it was a great grief to me that she had none,
though she would never say anything about it.
To my great joy, I found a second-hand Banner stove,
No. 2, at a sort of old junk-shop, which was, in fact, an
old curiosity shop not three blocks away from Ninety-
ninth Avenue. Some one had sold this to them while it
was really as good as new, and yet the keeper offered it
to me at half-price.
I hung round the place a good deal, and when the man
found I really had money and meant something, he took me
into all sorts of alleys and hiding-places, where he
stored his old things away. I made fabulous
bargains there, for either the old Jew liked me
particularly, or I liked things that nobody else wanted.
In the days when his principal customers were wharf-rats,
and his principal business the traffic in old cordage and
copper, he had hung out as a sign an old tavern-sign of
a ship that had come to him. His place still went by the
name of "The Ship," though it was really, as I say, a
mere wreck, a rambling, third-rate old furniture shop of
the old-curiosity kind.
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