“I know it,” said Jack. “I wants a good deal. I have brought some fings to pay for it,” he added, confidentially; and opening the big bundle with great pride, he displayed to the astonished official a hobby-horse, a drum (nearly new), a set of building blocks and a paint-box.
“It’s a very good hobby-horse,” he said, proudly. “It has real hair, and he will go just as fast as—as you can make him go.”
Here the cashier turned red in the face, coughed and disappeared. “Perhaps he is having a fit, like the yellow kitten,” said Jack to himself, calmly; and he waited with cheerful patience till he should get his money.
In a few moments the cashier returned, and taking him by the hand, led him kindly into a back room, where three gentlemen were sitting.
They all had gray hair, and two of them wore gold-bowed spectacles; but they looked kind, and one of them beckoned Jack to come to him.
“What is all this, my little lad?” he asked. “Did any one send you here to get money?”
Jack shook his head stoutly. “No,” he said, “I comed myself; but I am not little. I stopped being little when I had trousers.”
“I see!” said the gentleman. “Of course. But what made you think you could get money here?”
The blue eyes opened wide.
“Mamma said that Papa got his money here; and I asked her if this was a money shop, and she said it was the only money shop she knowed of. So I comed.”