It was a big , pot-bellied affair , festooned with pink-gilt grapes , and with a verse of poetry printed on one side , and it had been given as a wedding present to the Old Lady 's great-grandmother . As long as the Old Lady could remember it had sat on the top shelf in the cupboard in the sitting-room wall , far too precious ever to be used . Two years before , a woman who collected old china had explored Spencervale , and , getting word of the grape jug , had boldly invaded the old Lloyd place and offered to buy it . She never , to her dying day , forgot the reception the Old Lady gave her ; but , being wise in her day and generation , she left her card , saying that if Miss Lloyd ever changed her mind about selling the jug , she would find that she , the aforesaid collector , had not changed hers about buying it . People who make a hobby of heirloom china must meekly overlook snubs , and this particular person had never seen anything she coveted so much as that grape jug . The Old Lady had torn the card to pieces ; but she remembered the name and address . She went to the cupboard and took down the beloved jug . `` I never thought to part with it , '' she said wistfully , `` but Sylvia must have a dress , and there is no other way . And , after all , when I 'm gone , who would there be to have it ? Strangers would get it then -- it might as well go to them now . I 'll have to go to town to-morrow morning , for there 's no time to lose if the party is Friday night . I have n't been to town for ten years . I dread the thought of going , more than parting with the jug . But for Sylvia 's sake ! '' It was all over Spencervale by the next morning that Old Lady Lloyd had gone to town , carrying a carefully guarded box . Everybody wondered why she went ; most people supposed she had become too frightened to keep her money in a black box below her bed , when there had been two burglaries over at Carmody , and had taken it to the bank . The Old Lady sought out the address of the china collector , trembling with fear that she might be dead or gone . But the collector was there , very much alive , and as keenly anxious to possess the grape jug as ever . The Old Lady , pallid with the pain of her trampled pride , sold the grape jug and went away , believing that her great-grandmother must have turned over in her grave at the moment of the transaction . Old Lady Lloyd felt like a traitor to her traditions .
But she went unflinchingly to a big store and , guided by that special Providence which looks after simple-minded old souls XXXXX their dangerous excursions into the world , found a sympathetic clerk who knew just what she wanted and got it for her .
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