"But if you put in the capital," urged Archie, "you should have somebody else to supply the experience."
"All the experience that any of you would supply would be experience in eating them," Cricket replied, with severity. "Then I'd lose my money and my peanuts, too. Good-by. I'm going to make my arrangements now."
"If you buy your peanuts of old Simon, at the corner, make him give them to you wholesale," called Archie after her; and then he departed on a little private expedition.
Cricket was busy all the rest of the afternoon, getting her establishment together. First, a little, square table was unearthed in the garret, and was scrubbed and polished by Cricket's own hands. Then the old white phaeton umbrella was found and brushed, and a long slit in one side of the cover mended with stitches of heroic size. This was, with much painstaking, lashed firmly to the back of the stout, wooden chair, contributed by the kitchen. All these, old Billy, proud and happy at being selected as chief aid, took down to the little dock, where she was to set up business. She decided to invest a capital of fifty cents, not part of her new-found funds, but her private and personal possession, and expected to come out of her venture a millionaire. She made up her mind that she would not take even Billy into partnership, for it would be so much fun for him to buy peanuts of her; but she graciously allowed him to go to the village store with her the next morning, after breakfast, to help her carry home her stock in trade. She would have driven Mopsie, but the cart was not yet home from the blacksmith's.
Acting on the boys' suggestion, she proposed to old Simon Hodges, who kept the village store, that he should give her the peanuts wholesale, and they struck a bargain that she should buy them at nine cents a quart instead of ten, which Cricket regarded as a most generous reduction.
She invested in four quarts to begin with.
"Say, little 'un," suddenly proposed old Billy, nudging her, "why don't you buy some o' those pep'mint drops long o' the peanits. I'd just as lives buy 'em o' you as o' Simon. Fact is, I'd liver."
"What a good idea, Billy. 'Course I will."
Billy grinned from ear to ear.
"How will you sell them, Mr. Simon?"