'
'What book is it you are pointing to?' asked Sponge.
'It's not a book,' replied Mr. Jawleyford, 'it's a plan--a plan of this
gallery, in fact. I am supposed to be giving the final order for the
erection of the very edifice we are now in.'
'And a very handsome building it is,' observed Sponge, thinking he would
make it a shooting-gallery when he got it.
'Yes, it's a handsome thing in its way,' assented Jawleyford; 'better if it
had been water-tight, perhaps,' added he, as a big drop splashed upon the
crown of his head.
'The contents must be very valuable,' observed Sponge.
'Very valuable,' replied Jawleyford. 'There's a thing I gave two hundred
and fifty guineas for--that vase. It's of Parian marble, of the Cinque
Cento period, beautifully sculptured in a dance of Bacchanals, arabesques,
and chimera figures; it was considered cheap. Those fine monkeys in Dresden
china, playing on musical instruments, were forty; those bronzes of
scaramouches on ormolu plinths were seventy; that ormolu clock, of the
style of Louis Quinze, by Le Roy, was eighty; those Sevres vases were a
hundred--mounted, you see, in ormolu, with lily candelabra for ten lights.
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