“Too bad,” said Betty, her warm heart instantly touched. “Do you sell many of these?” she added, touching a piece of embroidery.
“Not so many,” returned the clerk. “You see the work is so rare that we have to charge a pretty good price for it. People come here and say how beautiful it is--and go away. And yet we can’t honestly sell it for any less. We promised the old lady a pretty good price for it, you see. It’s worth it.”
“Oh, dear,” murmured Grace, petulantly. “How unfortunate.”
“What’s the matter, now?” asked the Little Captain, politely.
“Oh,” said Grace, replacing the centerpiece she had been studying upon a little pile of pieces, “I had my mind set on buying that for mother’s birthday, but if it’s so very expensive I guess I can’t.”
“We might make a special price for you,” said the young saleswoman obligingly, and straightway they fell to bartering while the other girls moved away to study other articles of interest on the floor.
“I feel sorry for that old woman,” said Amy, absently staring at some filmy embroidered handkerchiefs. “It must be pretty bad to be old and friendless----”
“Well, I don’t see much use in our worrying about it,” said Mollie, briskly.
“There’s Grace with the centerpiece under her arm,” chuckled Betty. “Wonder how she did it.”
“By pretty near breaking herself I suppose,” said Mollie, adding ruefully: “What do you bet we have to treat her to lunch?”
But both Amy and Betty were too wise to bet on anything so sure to go against them, and in this way they proved their shrewdness. Once outside the store Grace confessed, not at all shamefacedly, that after buying the centerpiece the entire extent of her resources was twenty-five cents.
“That,” said Betty, with a twinkle, “will just about buy you one sandwich.”
“Have a heart,” protested Grace. “The way I feel one sandwich would just about whet my appetite.”
“Well, girls, I suppose we can’t see her starve,” sighed Betty, as they entered the tempting little tea shop, all white tables and blue walls.
“A blight on our soft hearts,” murmured Mollie, at which Betty and Amy giggled and Grace smiled sweetly. And the way she ordered from the delectable dishes on the menu, one might have been excused for thinking that Grace herself was treating to the luncheon.