"They're awfully dusty," complained Nell, as she looked at the sugar bowl and pitcher.
"That's 'cause they're so old and valuable, my dear," snarled the old man. "But my wife she dust them off for you, and I wrap them up, though I ought to charge you a penny for a sheet of paper. But what I care if I dies in the poorhouse."
"Are you goin' there soon?" asked Flossie. "We've got a poorhouse at
Lakeport, and it's awful nice."
"Oh, well, little one, maybe I don't go there just yet," said the man who spoke wrong words sometimes. "Here, Mina!" he called, and a woman, almost as old as he, came from the back room. "Wipe off the dust. I have sold the old dishes—the valuable old dishes."
"Ah, such a bargain as they got!" murmured the old woman. "Them is valuable china. Such a bargains!"
"Where did you get them?" asked Nan, as the dishes were being wrapped and the old man was counting over the nickels, dimes and pennies of the children's money.
"Where I get them? Of how should I know? Maybe they come in by somebody what sell them for money. Maybe we buy them in some old house like Washington's. It is long ago. We have had them in the shop a long time, but the older they are the better they get. They is all the better for being old—a better bargain, my dear!" and the old woman smiled, showing a mouth from which many teeth were missing.
"Well, come on," said Billy, when the dishes had been wrapped and given to Bert, who carried them carefully. "But I wish you had some sailboats," he said to the old man, as if that was all they had come in to buy.
"I have some next week," answered the old man. "Comes around then and have a big bargains in a sailsboats."
"Maybe I will," agreed Billy.