The Knights of the White Shield Part 27

"Let's postpone it till to-morrow afternoon, when there's no school," said Charlie.

"Who's agreed?" asked the president.

"Me!" responded the club, vociferously. They all had prudently concluded to wait for the advent of more daylight, and, withdrawing from the barn, went down the yard talking as busily as if they were a lot of hens cackling after a successful venture at egg-laying. It had been left to Charlie to put above the notice, "FAIR," the word "POSTPONED."

"That will prevent any rush till morning, and save folks from being disappointed," Sid had declared.

In the afternoon every thing was under way, and Aunt Stanshy went out to see the fair.

"I should never know the place, I must say," remarked Aunt Stanshy, as her eyes swept the spot. There were several so-called "tables," such as an old window-blind and a disused shelf propped up by various supports like boxes and barrels. These tables were covered with pieces of the old curtain, now doing service for the last time.

"Here is the confectionery table," shouted Juggie. There were now on the table three pieces of mola.s.ses candy made by his grandmother. He had had twelve to start with, and, as he had sold none, the disposition of the missing nine pieces was a matter of grave suspicion.

"Here's the toy table!" called out Charlie. He had a few paper dolls and a few "hand-painted" sh.e.l.ls, the decorator being Sid, and prominent on the table was the cotton image of that friend of the club, Santa Claus.

"Buy a corner-copier stuffed wid candy!" shouted Juggie, holding up a brown paper tunnel into which he was about dropping a solitary piece of candy.

The governor had the "harvest table," which was groaning under the weight of three pears and two papers of seed.

"What's this?" asked Aunt Stanshy, stopping before a discarded mantel-piece resting on a rabbit-box and a coal-hod. On this "table" were autumn leaves, sprigs of hemlock, a few ferns, and one chrysanthemum blossom.

"Thith?" replied Pip, who, like all the others, had put on a "Sunday smile" to attract customers. "Thith ith a flower table. Will you buy a flower?"

"If I can see one," said Aunt Stanshy, laughing.

"There," said Pip, triumphantly holding up the lonely chrysanthemum. "One thent only! Thomething rare!"

"I'll buy it, and here is the cent."

"Cath!" sang out Pip, in tones of command, addressed to a supposed cash-boy.

No one responded.

"Cath!"

"Why, you are the cash-boy," said the president, "and you bring the money to me, for I am the cashier."

"I tend a counter," squeaked Pip. A serious misunderstanding as to positions in the fair here threatened to arise, but it was all averted by the obliging Tony, who undertook to transport all bullion from the tables to the cashier's office.

There now appeared the president's little sister, "Callie Doodles," as she was familiarly called.

"O, boys, she's got a cent, for mother promised it to her! She isn't a nail-one!" shouted her brother.

Nail-ones belonged to an inferior caste. This cla.s.s included those who had been about the streets and yards, back of barns and in old corner-lots, picking up nails or cast-away bits of iron. Their currency was the more common. A hard-cash customer was about as common as bobolinks in December.

"Callie, come here and buy some fruit!"

"Don't you want some candy, Callie?"

"Buy a toy, Callie!"

"Flowerth! flowerth!" were the various shouts greeting the cash customer.

She was saluted eagerly, as hack-men hail the arrivals in the trains at a city station. Callie made no reply, but stubbed in a demure, dignified way, from table to table, finally halting where children's strongest pa.s.sion is sure to take them, at the candy table. Here she traded away her cash.

"And wont you try a piece?" said Juggie to Aunt Stanshy, displaying his stock of two pieces of candy. "Try dese goods."

She graciously took the sample.

"How do you sell candy?"

"Cent a stick."

"Well, I'll take it."

"Two cents," said Juggie, prudently charging for the piece given on trial also.

As Aunt Stanshy left this enterprising trader, she heard a vigorous summons:

"Cash! cash!"

At the supper-table that night Charlie asked, "Aunty, what do you suppose we are going to have now in our club? Something at our fair, I mean?"

"A tornado."

"No, a refreshment saloon; and the boys said they knew you would be in every day to buy something."

"O dear!" groaned Aunt Stanshy, inwardly.

"We are going to have ice-cream, too, may be. We couldn't afford it in summer."

"Not in summer? Why, that's the time when people want it most."

"But we make ours out of snow, you know, and could only have it in cold weather."

"Then I hope, for your sake, we may have some snow, and I see that the clouds look like it. But the weather is getting colder nowadays, and if you have your snow, and so can make your ice-cream, it may be so cold that you will have no customers."

"We will risk _that_. Ice-cream always pays. Ours does, at any rate."

"Snow is coming, I guess, for it looks like a change in the weather."

A change, indeed, was setting in. The river indicated it. It was as smooth and gla.s.sy as if Aunt Stanshy's flat iron had been over it and pressed every wrinkle and ripple down. The air was light. The smoke from the houses and the steam from the only tug that the commerce of the town could afford to support fell, and fluttered downward in thin veils. Overhead there was a ma.s.s of gray cloud halting directly above the town, and looking too lazy ever to stir again.

"Storm comin'!" declared Simes Badger to all his cronies at Silas Trefethen's store. "Wind is sou' already."

It did not stay "sou'," but swung around to the east, then worked into the north-east, and then all through the night the wind was sifting cotton-wool down on all the streets as if carpeting them, on all the roofs as if blanketing them, into all the cracks in the walls of houses and barns as if it would c.h.i.n.k them up and make them tight for winter.

Chancing to look out of the window as soon as he was awake the morning after the storm, Charlie shouted,

"Ice-cream!"