,
not part of her new-found funds, but her private and personal
possession, and expected to come out of her venture a millionaire. She
made up her mind that she would not take even Billy into partnership,
for it would be so much fun for him to buy peanuts of her; but she
graciously allowed him to go to the village store with her the next
morning, after breakfast, to help her carry home her stock in trade. She
would have driven Mopsie, but the cart was not yet home from the
blacksmith's.

Acting on the boys' suggestion, she proposed to old Simon Hodges, who
kept the village store, that he should give her the peanuts wholesale,
and they struck a bargain that she should buy them at nine cents a quart
instead of ten, which Cricket regarded as a most generous reduction.

She invested in four quarts to begin with.

"Say, little 'un," suddenly proposed old Billy, nudging her, "why don't
you buy some o' those pep'mint drops long o' the peanits. I'd just as
lives buy 'em o' you as o' Simon. Fact is, I'd liver."

"What a good idea, Billy. 'Course I will."

Billy grinned from ear to ear.

"How will you sell them, Mr. Simon?"

Simon, a weather-beaten old sailor, who had taken to keeping store in
his old age, thought he could sell her as many as she could take aboard
at the rate of six for five cents, instead of the regular rate of a
penny apiece. These peppermint drops must have been peculiar to Marbury,
I think, for I have never seen any just like them anywhere else. They
were thick and round, and about two inches across, indented in the
middle, like a rosette. They were not soft and creamy, but hard and
crunchy, though how much of this latter property rose from the lack of
absolute freshness, I am not prepared to say, for it was a standing joke
with the boys that Simon had once been heard to remark that he hadn't
gotten in his summer stock of candy yet. Some of the peppermints were
pink, and some were striped red and white. Cricket supplied herself with
six of each.

"That makes forty-six cents, doesn't it? I ought to spend the whole of
my money," she said, twirling her half-dollar on the counter.

"Tobaccer?" queried Billy, quickly, thinking of his other indulgence.
"I'd just as lives--"

"Oh, _no_, Billy, I wouldn't have tobacco for anything, nasty stuff,"
said Cricket.

Billy looked dejected.

"Didn't mean no harm," he said, meekly.

"Never mind, Billy. Now what shall I get?"

"Lemons," suggested Simon, defe