“Where da gooda hotel for sella da goods?” asked Louise, with a broad and friendly grin, of the interested dock-keeper.
“Any at all,” he answered. “Just go straight down this road till you see a hotel. They’re all together.”
“Thank you, mister,” Louise answered, and they trotted on.
The sight of two young Italian girls carrying a stretcher full of goods proved to be a little more of a sensation than the girls had bargained for. They felt as if they had never been so much stared at in their lives, and they were both grateful when they reached the shelter of the first hotel porch.
It was a big hotel that they had come upon, and its wide porches were full of women, young and old, rocking, and talking and embroidering, and willing enough to look at the things the girls had. The arrangement was that Winona should take care of the smaller things, the painted and embroidered linens and so forth in the suitcases, while Louise attended to the pottery and larger art-craft things, and a row of Adelaide’s jellies. She didn’t expect to sell the jelly to people who already had three meals a day, but she was agreeably surprised. Evidently they liked to have things to eat in their rooms.
The stretcher and suitcases were set on the porch and Louise, with an ingratiating grin under her shawl, went from woman to woman, holding up her wares.
“Look at da fine pot—native wares—very cheapa?” she asked. “You not have to buy. We lika show. Buy da fine pot cheapa? You nice lady—you take real Indian pillow—real pine pillow!”
“I believe I will,” said an energetic-looking old lady with white hair and a black silk dress. “How much is that pillow, my dear? And aren’t you pretty young to be out selling things this way? You don’t look more than seventeen.”
Louise swelled with pride at being taken for as old as that, but she managed to answer, “One dollar for pillow—very cheap—real hand work!” and to the last question, “I lika sella da goods—four little poor ones younger as me home. I very old!”
At which the elderly lady bought the pillow on the spot. Louise put the dollar in the pocket of her skirt, and went back to the stretcher after a big vase of Helen’s, which was the pride of her heart, and for which she meant to ask at least one-fifty.