Flora Butler, who was behind the counter, came to the door and spoke to them.
“How much is the peanut straw hat?” Peggy asked.
“Peggy, I have told you I can’t get the hat for you,” said her mother.
“It really is a bargain,” said Miss Butler.
“It is a very pretty hat,” said Mrs. Owen, “but I am spending more than I can afford on my garden.”
“How’s the canary?” Peggy asked.
“He is all right. He will give you a free concert any time you can stop to hear him.”
“It seemed too bad he could not be free like the other birds,” Peggy thought.
And then one day, as they were coming back from school, she saw the empty cage in the window, and Mrs. Butler, half distracted, was asking the school-children if any of them had seen her canary-bird. “I don’t know what my husband will say when he comes back from the store for his dinner, and he finds it gone,” she said. “He sets as much store by that canary as if it was a puppy.”
The school-children stood about in an interested group.