“Gee! who wants to buy a basket?” scoffed Sammy. “You only have to carry things in it.” The bane of Sammy Pinkney’s existence was the running of errands.
“But they are pretty,” murmured Tess.
“Oh—oo! See that nice green and yellow one with the cover,” gasped Dot. “Do you suppose we’ve got money enough to buy that one, Tess? How nice it would be to carry the children’s clothes in when we go on picnics.”
By “children” Dot meant their dolls, of which, the two smaller Corner House girls possessed a very large number. Several of these children, besides the Alice-doll, were grouped upon a bench in the corner of the garage as a part of the circus audience. The remainder of the spectators were Sandyface and her family. Sandyface was now a great, great grandmother cat, and more of her progeny than one would care to catalog tranquilly viewed the little girls’ circus or rolled in kittenish frolic on the floor.
It sometimes did seem as though the old Corner House demesne was quite given up to feline inhabitants. And the recurrent appearance of new litters of kittens belonging to Sandyface herself, her daughters and granddaughters, had ceased to make even a ripple in the pool of Corner House existence.
This explanation regarding the dolls and cats is really aside from our narrative. Tess and Dot both viewed with eager eyes the particular covered basket held out enticingly by the old Gypsy woman.
Of course the little girls had no pockets in their gymnasium suits. But in a pocket of her raincoat which Tess had worn down to the garage over her blouse and bloomers, she found a dime and two pennies—“just enough for two ice-cream cones,” Sammy Pinkey observed.
“Oh! And my Alice-doll has eight cents in her cunning little beaded bag,” cried Dot, with sudden animation.
She produced the coins. But there was only twenty cents in all!
“I—I—What do you ask for that basket, please?” Tess questioned cautiously.