Chapter 5 The White Elephant Sale

Tuppence was pleasurably surprised to find the brass¹ lamp which she andTommy now regarded with such repulsion welcomed with the utmostwarmth.
‘How very good of you, Mrs Beresford, to bring us something as nice asthat. Most interesting, most interesting. I suppose it must have come fromabroad on your travels once.’
‘Yes. We bought it in Egypt,’ said Tuppence.
She was quite doubtful by this time, a period of eight to ten years havingpassed, as to where she had bought it. It might have been Damascus, shethought, and it might equally well have been Baghdad or possibly Tehran.
But Egypt, she thought, since Egypt was doubtless in the news at this mo-ment, would be far more interesting. Besides, it looked rather Egyptian.
Clearly, if she had got it from any other country, it dated from some periodwhen they had been copying Egyptian work.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘it’s rather big for our house, so I thought–’
‘Oh, I think really we ought to raffle² it,’ said Miss Little.
Miss Little was more or less in charge of things. Her local nickname was‘The Parish Pump’, mainly because she was so well informed about allthings that happened in the parish. Her surname was misleading. She wasa large woman of ample proportions. Her Christian³ name was Dorothy,but she was always called Dotty.
‘I hope you’re coming to the sale, Mrs Beresford?’
Tuppence assured her that she was coming.
‘I can hardly wait to buy,’ she said chattily.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you feel like that.’
‘I think it’s a very good thing,’ said Tuppence. ‘I mean, the White Ele-phant idea, because it’s–well, it is so true, isn’t it? I mean, what’s one per-son’s white elephant is somebody else’s pearl beyond price.’
‘Ah, really we must tell that to the vicar,’ said Miss Price-Ridley, an angu-lar lady with a lot of teeth. ‘Oh yes, I’m sure he would be very muchamused.’
‘That papier-m?ché basin, for instance,’ said Tuppence, raising this par-ticular trophy⁴ up.
‘Oh really, do you think anyone will buy that?’
‘I shall buy it myself if it’s for sale when I come here tomorrow,’ saidTuppence.

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