" This was a wee closet
under the stairs, where the coal scuttles were ranged, until they should
fare forth to replenish the "base burners" which warmed the Museum home.
In real life the name of the Museum's lodgings was Harness Block, and
Mr. Harness had proffered the cause of art two empty stores, formerly a
fish market and a grocery. As there was no private office (only a wire
cage), when Miss Hopkins felt the need of frank speech she signaled
Claudia to the coal hole.
She was closeted with her thus on the morning of the second day. The
subject of the conference was the last assault on the nerves of the
committee, perpetrated by the Miller twins--not in person, but with
their china. The china, itself, had the outward semblance of ordinary
blue earthen ware of a cheap grade; but the Miller twins were convinced
(on the testimony of their dear old minister, who never told a lie in
his life, and who had heard the Millers' grandmother say--and everybody
knows that _she_ was a saint on earth, and she was ninety years old at
the time, and would she be likely to lie almost on her dying bed?--you
might call it her dying bed, averred Miss Miller, since she was
bedridden for two years before her death, on that same old four-poster
bedstead which belonged to her mother, and at last died on it) that the
blue ware had been the property of George the Third, had been sold and
was on board the ship with the tea which was rifled in Boston Harbor.
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