PEARLS AND A PRICE

Evening Star, Issue 14630, 28 July 1911, Page 3

PEARLS AND A PRICE

Here is a perfectly true story which has never appeared in print, but which •« known to scores of people (says the c l u b winter gossip of the ‘ Liverpool Dailv Post ’):—A maiden lady was bicycling in the south of Scotland, and caucht in the handle-bar of her machine the chain which supported her glasses, snapping it into several pieces. So she went into the solitary shop of the village through which she was pasfang and asked for any sort of chain. The old woman said she had only a string of old glass beads which had been in her own family for years, but, a? times wero bad, she would part with them. Thinking them rather pretty. the lady paid the price asked, which was 15s. About 10 days later, on her return to London she went to a jeweller to get her small gold chain mended., still wearing her glasses on the beads. The man noticed them, and asked if he might show them to the head of the firm. The latter soon came forward, and said ftS would he happy to offor £SOO for the necklet. Without shewing the least surprise, the lady capaciously answered that she would* think the matter over. Then she went to a friend in one of the museums. After a little research among books, he pronounced the beads to bs the lost string of wonderful pearls Mary Queen of Scots had worn on the scaffoldand several experts agreed ■Finally the beads wero sold for £1*5.000 and oiit of part of the proceeds the lady took care that the old saleswoman should be made more than aamfoxtshla for the scat of bei liter