He loved his wife, but I think it grieved him when smart-colored glass vases were strewn among the cherished bits of old china and enamel which his soul loved.

He did not like chromo-lithographs, or the framed photographs which Mrs.Alwynn called her "momentums of travel," among his rare old prints, either.

He bore them, but after their arrival in company with large and inappropriate nails, and especially after the cut-glass candlesticks appeared on the drawing-room chimney-piece, he ceased to make his little occasional purchases of old china and old silver.

The curiosity shops knew him no more, or if he still at times brought home some treasure in his hat-box, on his return from Convocation, it was unpacked and examined in private, and a little place was made for it among the old Chelsea figures on the bookcase in his study, which had stood, ever since he had inherited them from his father, on the drawing-room mantle-piece, but had been silently removed when a pair of comic china elephants playing on violins had appeared in their midst.
Mr.Alwynn sighed a little when he looked at them this afternoon, and shook his head; for had he not brought back in his empty soup-tin an old earthen-ware cow of Dutch extraction, which he had long coveted on the shelf of a parishioner?
He had bought it very dear, for when in all his life had he ever bought anything cheap?
And now, as he was tenderly wiping a suspicion of beef-tea off it, he wondered, as he looked round his study, where he could put it.

Not among the old Oriental china, where bits of Wedgwood had already elbowed in for want of room elsewhere.