Nancy, we don't have to take all that home with us, do we?
Can't you send them, Mr. Simpson?"

The grocer shrugged apologetically.

"It's Saturday, Miss Prescott, and the last delivery went out at
three--all my boys have gone home now or I'd try to accommodate you."

"I do hate to go about looking like an old market woman, with my arms
full of brown paper parcels," murmured Alma, _sotto voce_ to her sister.

"Goodness, I don't imagine there'll be a grand stand along the way,
with thousands watching us through opera glasses," laughed Nancy.
"Would you mind telling me whom you expect to meet who'd faint with
genteel horror because we take home our Sunday dinner? I don't intend
to starve to spare anybody's feelings."

"Last week I was dragging along a bag of potatoes--and--and I met Frank
Barrows. And the bag split while I was talking to him, and those
hateful potatoes went bumping around all over the pavement. I never
was so mortified in my life," said Alma, sulkily.

Nancy shot a keen glance at her sister's pretty face, and her eyes
twinkled. Alma's shortage of the American commodity called humor was a
source of continual quiet joy to Nancy, who was the only member of the
Prescott family with the full-sized endowment of that gift.

"Dear me, whatever did Frank do? Scream and cover his eyes from the
awful sight? Had he never seen a raw potato in all his sheltered young
life?"

Alma shrugged her shoulders--a slight gesture with which she and her
mother were wont to express their hopeless realization of Nancy's lack
of finer feelings.

"I don't suppose you would have minded it. But _I_ hate to look
ridiculous, particularly before anyone like Frank Barrows."

"But, Alma, you funny girl, don't you see that you look a thousand
times more ridiculous when you act as if a few potatoes bouncing about
were something serious? Don't tell me you stood there gazing off
haughtily into the blue distance while Frank gathered up your silly old
potatoes? Or did you disown them? Or did you play St. Elizabeth, and
expect a miracle to turn them into roses so that they would be less
offensive to Frank's aristocratic eyes? Come on now, help me shoulder
our provisions. We're members of the Swiss Family Robinson, going back
to our hut with our spoils. Pretend we're savages, and this is a
desert island, and not respectable Melbrook at all. Next time we go
marketing you can disguise yourself with a beard and blue goggles."