"How much do we pay?" asked Polly. "O dear me, Joe, I don't b'lieve you'll get many people to see it."
"Pins, I s'pose," said Ben.
"Yes," said Joel, "pins, an' good ones, too, not crooked, bent old things."
"Pins cost money," said Mrs. Pepper, looking up from her work-basket. "I suppose you know that, Joel?"
"Well, we can't let folks in without paying," said Joel, in deep anxiety. "'Twouldn't be a circus if we did."
"I tell you," said Polly, seeing his forehead all puckered up in wrinkles; "why don't you have some tickets, Joel, made out of paper, you know, and marked on 'em for ten cents and five cents?"
"Where'd you get the paper, Polly?" asked Ben, who was very practical. "Better not propose anything you can't carry out. Look at Joe's face," he whispered, under cover of the shouts from the two boys.
"O dear me!" cried Polly, whispering back, "we never have anything! It's perfectly dreadful, Ben; and we must help Joe. And you know yourself there aren't any pins hardly in the house, and Mamsie couldn't give us one of those."
"You must think of something else besides paper, for that's just as bad as pins," said Ben, with perfect faith that Polly would contrive a good way out of the difficulty.
Polly put her head into her two hands, while Joel was vociferating, "Oh, tickets! Goody! Polly's going to make 'em! Polly's going to make 'em!" in a way to fill her with dismay, while she racked her brains to think what would satisfy Joel as entrance money to his circus.