THE WOULDBEGOODS
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."
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