“‘Well, I suppose [it’s] all right, my boy,’ said the grocer. ‘If it isn’t, one of us’ll have to suffer, I guess. Now, what did you say you wanted?’
“Little Willy Kaatenstein repeated his order, and added other items.
“‘Now, Master Kaatenstein,’ said the grocer, ‘you never will be able to carry all that. That’ll make a pile of stuff. Better run back and get your little wagon’—for he knew the Kaatenstein wagon, having often placed in it a paper of sugar or a sack of salt or three tins of something according to Mrs. Kaatenstein’s order—for the children to draw home.
“So little Willy Kaatenstein ran back and got the little wagon from the front yard, and the man loaded the things into it. ‘Must be going to have a picnic,’ he observed.
“There was certainly a pile of stuff. There were long licorice pipes enough in the wagon to surfeit the appetites of the four Kaatensteins for many a day, and the name of the gum-drops was legion. And there were two watermelons, and cookies enough to satisfy even Jenny Kaatenstein’s capacious desire. Also there were nuts and some dyspeptic-looking pies, and a great many little dogs and cats and elephants made of a very tough kind of candy which all the Kaatenstein children thought perfectly lovely. Also there were figs in boxes and chocolate-drops and red and white sticks of candy, flavored with peppermint fit to make one’s mouth water. And all these things were in surprising quantity and made so heavy a load that little Willy Kaatenstein was hard put to it to drag it up the street. But little Willy Kaatenstein had strong little arms and he and the wagon made slow and sure progress back to the Kaatenstein home. The grocer stood out in front of his shop gazing after the boy and the boy’s wagon and the wagon’s contents with a puzzled and somewhat dubious smile.
“Little Willy Kaatenstein proceeded into his front yard with the wagon and around to the back on the side of the house where the kitchen door was not. He dragged the wagon quietly on to the farther end of the back yard and opened the gate of the pen made of laths, where Mrs. Kaatenstein’s ducks and geese were kept. He drew the wagon in and back behind the duck-house, and left it.
“Then little Willy Kaatenstein closed the lath gate and ran to find Harry Kaatenstein and Leah Kaatenstein and Jenny Kaatenstein and invite them to the feast.
“But they were nowhere to be found. He hunted about in the house and out of doors, but there was no sign of them, and for some reason he thought he would not ask Emma questions touching on their whereabouts.
“So having hunted for his relatives all that he thought best, little Willy Kaatenstein could but go out on the highways and byways and call in the lame, the halt, and the blind. Accordingly he slipped through the fence and went back into the alley-way to the house immediately behind his own, in search of Bill and Katy Kelly, two Irish friends of the Kaatenstein children—with whom they were not allowed to play. Bill and Katy Kelly, to be sure, were neither lame nor halt nor blind, but were very sound in limb and constitution, and were extremely responsive to little Willy Kaatenstein’s invitation to come to the feast. Feasts were things that Bill and Katy Kelly reveled in—when they had opportunity.
“So in company with little Willy Kaatenstein—he in his curls and his white suit, and the two in very dingy raiment—they hied them through the fence to the feast. They reached the duck-yard without being seen by Emma, the arch-enemy, and found the little wagon safe, and the ducks and geese staring and peering and stretching their necks at it and its contents with much curiosity.