“Those, ma’am, are not strawberry baskets.”

“But please let me see one.—­What is the price?”

“These fancy baskets, ma’am, you know, are another figure.  These are not intended for fruit.  These are eighteen pence apiece, ma’am.”

Daisy turned the baskets and the price over.  They were very neat! they would hold as many berries as the sixpenny ones, and look pretty too, as for a festival they should.  The sixpenny ones were barely neat—­they had no gala look about them at all.  While Daisy’s eye went from one to the other, it glanced upon the figure of the poor, patient, little waiting girl who stood watching her.  “If you please, Mr. Lamb,” she said, “will you hear what this little girl has to say?—­while I look at these.”

“What do you want, child?”

The answer came very low, but though Daisy did not want to listen she could not help hearing.

“Mother wants a pound of ham, sir.”

“Have you brought the money for the flour?”

“No, sir—­mother’ll send it.”

“We don’t cut our hams any more,” said the storekeeper.  “Can’t sell any less than a whole one—­and that’s always cash.  There! go child—­I can’t cut one for you.”

Daisy looked after the little ragged frock as it went out of the door.  The extreme mystery of some people being rich and some people poor, struck her anew, and perhaps something in her look as it came back to the storekeeper made him say,

“They’re very poor folks, Miss Randolph—­the mother’s sickly, and I should only lose my money.  They came and got some flour of me yesterday without paying for it—­and it’s necessary to put a stop to that kind of thing at once.  Don’t you think that basket’ll suit, ma’am?”

Baskets? and what meant those words which had been over and over in Daisy’s mind for the few days past?—­“Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”  Her mind was in great confusion.

“How much does a ham cost, Mr. Lamb?”

“Sixteen pence a pound, ma’am,” said the storekeeper rather drily, for he did not know but Daisy was thinking a reproof to him.

“But how many pounds are there in a ham?”

“Just as it happens, ma’am—­sometimes twenty, and from there down to ten.”

“Then how much does a whole ham cost?” said Daisy, whose arithmetic was not ready.

“A ham of fifteen pounds, ma’am, would be about two dollars and forty cents.”

Daisy stood looking at the baskets, and thinking how much money she would have over if she took the sixpenny ones.  She wanted twenty baskets; she found that the difference of price between the plain and the pretty would leave her twenty shillings in hand.  Just enough! thought Daisy,—­and yet, how could she go to a strange house and offer to give them a ham?  She thought she could not.  If she had known the people; but as it was—­Daisy bought the pretty baskets and set off homewards.