that they looked like a fortune.

"Gracious, what pretty money!" Maida exclaimed. "There must be a
million here."

"Five hundred," Billy corrected her.

He put some tiny cylindrical rolls of paper on the counter. Maida
handled them curiously--they, too, were heavy.

"Open them," Billy commanded.

Maida pulled the papers away from the tops. Bright new dimes fell
out of one, bright new nickels came from the other.

"Oh, I'm so glad to have nice clean money," Maida said in a
satisfied tone. She emptied the money drawer and filled its pockets
with the shining coins. "It was very kind of you to think of it,
Billy. I know it will please the children." The thought made her
eyes sparkle.

The bell rang again. Billy went out to talk with Granny, leaving
Maida alone to cope with her first strange customer.

Again her heart began to jump into her throat. Her mouth felt dry on
the inside. She watched the door, fascinated.

On the threshold two little girls were standing. They were exactly
of the same size, they were dressed in exactly the same way, their
faces were as alike as two peas in a pod. Maida saw at once that
they were twins. They had little round, chubby bodies, bulging out
of red sweaters; little round, chubby faces, emerging from tall,
peaky, red-worsted caps. They had big round eyes as expressionless
as glass beads and big round golden curls as stiff as candles. They
stared so hard at Maida that she began to wonder nervously if her
face were dirty.

"Come in, little girls," she called.

The little girls pattered over to the show case and looked in. But
their big round eyes, instead of examining the candy, kept peering
up through the glass top at Maida. And Maida kept peering down
through it at them.

"I want to buy some candy for a cent," one of them whispered in a
timid little voice.

"I want to buy some candy for a cent, too," the other whispered in a
voice, even more timid.

"All the cent candy is in this case," Maida explained, smiling.

"What are you going to have, Dorothy?" one of them asked.

"I don't know. What are you going to have, Mabel?" the other
answered. They discussed everything in the one-cent case. Always
they talked in whispers. And they continued to look more often at
Maida than at the candy.

"Have you anything two-for-a-cent?" Mabel whispered finally.

"Oh, yes--all the candy in this corner."

The two little girls studied the corner Maida indicated. For two or
three mome