r dollars. I can't remember half the things I've had."

"A pair of Shetland ponies, an automobile, a family of twenty dolls,
your weight in silver dollars," Rosie repeated after her. "Why,
Maida, you're dreaming or you're out of your head."

"Out of my head! Why, Rosie you're out of _your_ head. Don't you
suppose I know what I got for Christmas?" Maida's eyes began to
flash and her lips to tremble.

"Well, now, Maida, just think of it," Rosie said in her most
reasonable voice. "Here you are a little girl just like anybody else
only you're running a shop. Now just as if you could afford to have
an automobile! Why, my father knows a man who knows another man who
bought an automobile and it cost nine hundred dollars. What did
yours cost?"

"Two thousand dollars." Maida said this with a guilty air in spite
of her knowledge of her own truth.

Rosie smiled roguishly. "Maida, dear," she coaxed, "you dreamed it."

Maida started to her feet. For a moment she came near saying
something very saucy indeed. But she remembered in time. Of course
nobody in the neighborhood knew that she was "Buffalo" Westabrook's
daughter. It was impossible for her to prove any of her statements.
The flash died out of her eyes. But another flash came into her
cheeks--the flash of dimples.

"Well, perhaps I _did_ dream it, Rosie," she said archly. "But I
don't think I did," she added in a quiet voice.

Rosie turned the subject tactfully. "What are you going to give your
father?" she asked.

"That's bothering me dreadfully," Maida sighed; "I can't think of
anything he needs."

"Why don't you buy him the same thing I'm going to get my papa,"
Rosie suggested eagerly. "That is, I'm going to buy it if I make
enough money at the fair. Does your father shave himself?"

"Oh, Adolph, his valet, always shaves him," Maida answered.

Rosie's brow knit over the word _valet_--but Maida was always
puzzling the neighborhood with strange expressions. Then her brow
lightened. "My father goes to a barber, too," she said. "I've heard
him complaining lots of times how expensive it is. And the other day
Arthur told me about a razor his father uses. He says it's just like
a lawn-mower or a carpet-sweeper. You don't have to have anybody
shave you if you have one of them. You run it right over your face
and it takes all the beard off and doesn't cut or anything. Now,
wouldn't you think that would be fun?"

"I should think it would be just lovely," Maida agreed