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“No, no, my dear,” said the old lady, hurrying across the room in an excited, unusual sort of way. “I wish to show you something while we are by ourselves.” And she stooped to unlock a little cupboard in the great sideboard, and fumbled in the depths there, upsetting and clanking among some pieces of silver. Tom joined her with a pair of candles, but it was some moments before she could find what she wanted. Mrs. Burton appeared to be in a hurry, which almost never happened, and in trying to help her Tom dropped much wax unheeded at her side.

“Here it is at last,” she said, and went back to her seat at the table. “I ought to tell you the stories of some old silver that I keep in that cupboard; if I were to die, nobody would know anything about them.”

“Do you mean the old French spoons, and the prince’s porringer, and those things?” asked Tom, showing the most lively interest. But his grandmother was busy unfastening the strings of a little bag, and shook her head absently in answer to his question. She took out and handed to him a quaint old silver cup with two handles, that he could not remember ever to have seen.

“What a charming old bit!” said he, turning it about. “Where in the world did it come from? English, of course; and it looks like a loving-cup. A copy of some old Oxford thing, perhaps; only they didn’t copy much then. I should think it had been made for a child.” Tom turned it round and round and drew the candles toward him. “Here’s an inscription, too, but very much worn.”

“Put it down a minute,” said Mrs. Burton impatiently. “Every time I have thought of it I have been more and more ashamed to have it in the house. People weren’t so shocked by such things at first; they would only be sentimental about the ruined homes, and say that, ‘after all, it was the fortune of war.’ That cup was stolen.”

“But who stole it?” inquired Tom, with deep interest.

“Your father brought it here,” said Mrs. Burton, with great spirit, and even a tone of reproach. “My son, Tom Burton, your father, brought it home from the war. I think his plan was to keep it safe to send back to the owners. But he left it with your mother when he was ordered suddenly to the front; he was only at home four days, and the day after he got back to camp was the day he was killed, poor boy”–

“I remember something about it now,” Tom hastened to say. “I remember my mother’s talking about the breaking up of Southern homes, and all that; she never believed it until she saw the cup, and I thought it was awfully silly. I was at the age when I could have blown our own house to pieces just for the sake of the racket.”

“And that terrible year your grandfather’s and your mother’s death followed, and I was left alone with you–two of us out of the five that had made my home”–

“I should say one and a half,” insisted Tom, with some effort. “What a boy I was for a grandson! Thank Heaven, there comes a time when we are all the same age! We are jolly together now, aren’t we? Come, dear old lady, don’t let’s think too much of what’s gone by;” and he went round the table and gave her a kiss, and stood there where she need not look him in the face, holding her dear thin hand as long as ever she liked.

“I want you to take that silver cup back, Tom,” she said presently, in her usual tone. “Go back and finish your coffee.” She had seldom broken down like this. Mrs. Burton had been self-possessed, even to apparent coldness, in earlier life.

“How in the world am I going to take it back?” asked Tom, most businesslike and calm. “Do you really know just where it came from? And then it was several years ago.”