“What are you going to have, Dorothy?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know.  What are you going to have, Mabel?” the other answered.  They discussed everything in the one-cent case.  Always they talked in whispers.  And they continued to look more often at Maida than at the candy.

“Have you anything two-for-a-cent?” Mabel whispered finally.

“Oh, yes—­all the candy in this corner.”

The two little girls studied the corner Maida indicated.  For two or three moments they whispered together.  At one point, it looked as if they would each buy a long stick of peppermint, at another, a paper of lozenges.  But they changed their minds a great many times.  And in the end, Dorothy bought two large pickles and Mabel bought two large chocolates.  Maida saw them swapping their purchases as they went out.

The two pennies which the twins handed her were still moist from the hot little hands that had held them.  Maida dropped them into an empty pocket in the money drawer.  She felt as if she wanted to keep her first earnings forever.  It seemed to her that she had never seen such precious-looking money.  The gold eagles which her father had given her at Christmas and on her birthday did not seem half so valuable.

But she did not have much time to think of all this.  The bell rang again.  This time it was a boy—­a big fellow of about fourteen, she guessed, an untidy-looking boy with large, intent black eyes.  A mass of black hair, which surely had not been combed, fell about a face that as certainly had not been washed that morning.

“Give me one of those blue tops in the window,” he said gruffly.  He did not add these words but his manner seemed to say, “And be quick about it!” He threw his money down on the counter so hard that one of the pennies spun off into a corner.

He did not offer to pick the penny up.  He did not even apologize.  And he looked very carefully at the top Maida handed him as if he expected her to cheat him.  Then he walked out.

It was getting towards school-time.  Children seemed to spring up everywhere as if they grew out of the ground.  The quiet streets began to ring with the cries of boys playing tag, leap frog and prisoners’ base.  The little girls, much more quiet, squatted in groups on doorsteps or walked slowly up and down, arm-in-arm.  But Maida had little time to watch this picture.  The bell was ringing every minute now.  Once there were six children in the little shop together.

“Do you need any help?” Granny called.

“No, Granny, not yet,” Maida answered cheerfully.

But just the same, she did have to hurry.  The children asked her for all kinds of things and sometimes she could not remember where she had put them.  When in answer to the school bell the long lines began to form at the big doorways, two round red spots were glowing in Maida’s cheeks.  She drew an involuntary sigh of relief when she realized that she was going to have a chance to rest.  But first she counted the money she had taken in.  Thirty-seven cents!  It seemed a great deal to her.