“He ought to, he’s bald headed,” answered Nancy, implying there-by that Mr. Sanders was an old man and ought to be wise.

“Is he?” asked Ted innocently.

“For lands sake! Ted Brandon!” exclaimed Nancy. “Can’t you think what you’re saying? Is he what?”

The thread of the argument thus entirely lost, Ted just crammed away at the excelsior.

“I’m just dying to get at the store,” said Nancy next. “I want to fix that all up so that mother will buy more things to put in stock.”

“She’s going to bring home fishing rods. I’m goin’ to have a corner for sport stuff, you know,” Ted reminded the whirl-wind Nancy.

“Oh, yes, of course, that’s all right. But we’ll have to see which corner we can spare best. The store isn’t any too big, is it?”

“Big enough,” agreed the affable boy. “And I’ll bet, Nan, we’ll have heaps of sport around here this summer. There’s fine fellows over by the big hill. That’s more of a summer place than this is, I guess.”

“Where does your friend Uncle Sam live?”

“You mean Mr. Sanders. Why, he didn’t say, but he went up the hill toward that old stone place.”

“Yes. I wouldn’t wonder but he would live in an old stone place,” echoed Nancy sarcastically.

“Why, don’t you like him?”

“Like him?”

“I mean—do you hate him?” laughed Ted. His basket was filled and he was gathering up the loose ends of the splintered fibers upon a tin cover.

“I don’t like him and I don’t hate him, but I do hope he won’t come snooping around my store,” returned Nancy.

Teddy stopped short with a frying pan raised in mid air. He swung it at an imaginary ball, then put it down in the still packed peach basket.

“Now, Nan,” he protested, “don’t you go kickin’ up any fuss about Mr. Sanders. He always came around here; he’s a great friend of the Townsends.”

“Ted Brandon!” Nancy flirted the dust brush at the gas stove, “do you think I am going to take all that with this store? Did we buy all the Townsends’ 

 Prev. P 18/111 next