were only
cents, but then one can buy a great many things here for a cent that
one would have to pay a penny for at home, especially sweets."

That evening she sat fingering her little hoard while Molly was busy
preparing her birch bark. "I think I can do very nicely," announced
Mary. "I shall have a dollar to spend at the bazaar. Oh, is that the
way you do the napkin rings, Molly? Could I do some, do you think?"

"Of course you could," said Molly, encouragingly.

"I know what I am going to do," said Polly, jumping up; "I'm going to
get some tiny pine trees to put into little birch-bark boxes; they will
look so pretty. Come on, Molly, it isn't dark yet."

"Oh, but we mustn't get them now," replied Molly. "We must wait till
the very last thing, so they will look as fresh as possible."

Polly stopped short. In her impetuous way she had forgotten this
important point. "Oh, I never thought of that," she said. "Well,
anyhow, we can make the boxes."

"I don't believe we can do those either," returned Molly, further
dampening Polly's ardor. "We ought to have some small wooden boxes to
tack or glue the bark on. We can try some little baskets with handles,
and we can fill those with fudge or some kind of home-made candy."

"Oh, very well, we'll begin on those, then." And Polly sat down
contentedly with the others to try her ingenuity. They became so
absorbed in their work that they forgot all about supper, the more so
that their afternoon tea had taken the edge from their appetites, and
it was not till the maid from the Whartons came over for Grace, saying
that her grandmother was wondering how much longer they must save her
supper for her that they realized how late it was. Then Grace having
scurried home, the three cousins searched about to see what was in the
larder for themselves. They found plenty of bread and butter,
ginger-snaps and stewed gooseberries, but not much else, so they sat
down contentedly to this fare while the sunset turned from rose to
purple and then to gray. It was late enough in the season for the
evenings to become chilly after sundown, and Polly proposed that they
should have an open fire. "We can sit around and tell stories," she
said, "and we can go on with our work at the same time, so the time
will pass very quickly till Aunt Ada comes back."

"I'll love that," declared Molly. "I think telling stories is the very
nicest way of passing away the time."

"So do I," said Mar