“Real pottery pot, lady!” she explained to the nearest woman to her. “Real hand-made—see? Real hand-painted—only two dollar!”
Louise had spent a summer at a hotel herself, the year before, and she knew all the tricks and manners of the porch-peddlers. She let the woman who wanted the vase beat her down to one-sixty, and pocketed the extra dime that she hadn’t thought she’d get with a sense of duty well done. She frisked up and down the porch having a glorious time, while Winona, with her open suitcase, sat still by the top step. She did not need to move, for the women were as interested in her wares as they always are in table-linens. She sold a stencilled crash luncheon set of Marie’s, five pieces, for five dollars, while Louise was haggling over the price for Helen’s vase. Several of the bead bags and necklaces woven on the little looms went, too. The girls left that porch with nearly twelve dollars worth of goods sold.
The next hotel did not do so well by them, for the people there only bought a few handkerchiefs and bead chains. Still it was better than nothing. They had covered six hotels by one o’clock and made twenty-five dollars. The needle-work, much to the girls’ surprise, went more quickly than anything else.
“It must be the wistful sweetness of your expression, or else they think I look too well-fed to be sorry for, Win,” said Louise as they munched their sandwiches on the dock. The dock-keeper had given them permission. “You just sit still and look pleasant, and the sales get made. I have to chase all over creation, and tease and joke and cheapen, to get them to buy mine.”
“I’m afraid to talk much, for fear my accent will break through,” explained Winona. “It’s the goods, I think. They all seem crazy over those stencilled things. I could sell a lot more if I had them.”
“Haven’t you any more?” asked Louise between bites.
“Only one, and I promised that to your kinda lady that you sold the pine pillow to, and told you were the oldest of five. But I’m taking orders,” finished Winona with a grin.
“Do you suppose Marie will stand for going on with it?”
“For what—this bandanna party? She needn’t—I’ll deliver them myself,” stated Winona calmly.
“What about the carved frames Elizabeth made?” asked Louise, as they rose and took up the burden of life in the shape of their much lightened stretcher.