The store counter was made by putting a board across two boxes and they took turns being the storekeeper. Trouble wanted to play, too. But he only wanted to buy bits of molasses cookies, and he ate the pieces as fast as he got them, without pretending to go out of the store to take them home.
"Me buy more tookie!" he would say, swallowing the last crumb and hurrying up to the board counter with another "penny," which was a shell or a stone.
"You mustn't eat them up so fast, Trouble," said Janet. "Else we won't have any left to play store with."
"Oh, well, we can get more from Nora," said Ted. "And the cookies taste awful good."
They played store until there were no more good things left to eat and Nora would not hand out any others from her boxes and pans in the kitchen tent. Then the Curlytops and Hal got in the rowboat and paddled about in the shallow cove.
Trouble did not go with them, his mother saying he must have a little sleep so he would not be so cross in the afternoon. And when Jan, her brother and Hal came up from the lake they found the little fellow making what he called a "playhouse."
"Oh, what funny stones Trouble has!" cried Ted as he saw them.
"They're blue."
"They're pretty," decided Janet. "Where'd you get them, Trouble?"
"Over dere," and he pointed to a spot some distance from the camp.
"He found them himself and brought them here in his apron," said Mrs. Martin. "He's been piling them up into what I called a castle, but he says it's a playhouse. He's been very good playing with the blue stones."