The Towncrier, passing along the street on an early morning trip to the
bakery, stopped at the door of the antique shop, for a word with Mrs.
Yates, the lady who kept it. She wanted him to "cry" an especial bargain
sale of old lamps later in the week. That is how he happened to be
standing in the front door when the crash came in the rear of the shop,
and it was because he was standing there that the crash came.

Because Mrs. Yates was talking to him she couldn't be at the back door
when the fish-boy came with the fish, and nobody being there to take it
the instant he knocked, the boy looked in and threw it down on the table
nearest the door. And because the fish was left to lie there a moment
while Mrs. Yates finished her conversation, the cat, stretched out on the
high window ledge above the table, decided to have his breakfast without
waiting to be called. He was an enormous cat by the name of "Grandpa,"
and because he was old and ponderous, and no longer light on his feet,
when he leaped from the windowsill he came down clumsily in the middle of
the very table _full_ of the old lamps which were set aside for the
bargain sale.

Of course, it was the biggest and fanciest lamp in the lot that was
broken--a tall one with a frosted glass shade and a row of crystal prisms
dangling around the bowl of it. It toppled over on to a pair of old brass
andirons, smashing into a thousand pieces. Bits of glass flew in every
direction, and "Grandpa," his fur electrified by his fright until he
looked twice his natural size, shot through the door as if fired from a
cannon, and was seen no more that morning.

Naturally, Mrs. Yates hurried to the back of the store to see what had