on, day in and day out, from
before daylight till after dark, and then fixin' 'em all up like this
and everything! I don't prapose to waste 'em just to suit Noble Dill,
and I'm not goin' to give 'em away either. If anybody wanted to buy 'em
and offered a good fair price, money down, why, I----"

"_That's_ it, Herbert!" his lady-cousin exclaimed with sudden
excitement. "Let's sell 'em!" She jumped up, her eyes bright. "I bet we
could get maybe five dollars for 'em. We can pour the ones that are in
the jars that haven't got tops and the ones in the jelly glasses and
pill-boxes--we can pour all those into the jars that have got tops, and
put the tops on again, and that'd just about fill those jars--and then
we could put 'em in a basket and take 'em out and sell 'em!"

"Where could we sell 'em?" Herbert inquired, not convinced.

"At the fish store!" she cried. "Everybody uses bugs and worms for bait
when they go fishing, don't they? I bet the fish man'll buy all the
worms we got, even if he wouldn't buy anything else. I bet he'll buy all
the others, too! I bet he never saw as much good bait as this all at one
time in his whole life! I bet he'll give us five dollars--maybe more!"

Herbert was dazzled; the thought of this market was a
revelation--nothing could have been more plausible. Considered as bait,
the c'lection at once seemed to acquire a practical and financial value
which it lacked, purely as a c'lection. And with that the amateur and
scientist disappeared, giving way to the person of affairs. "'Give _us_
five dollars'?" he said, in this capacity, and for deeper effect he used
a rhetorical expression: "Who do you think is the owner of all this fish
bait, may I ask you, pray?"

"Yes, you _may_, pray!" was his cousin's instant and supercilious
retort. "Pray where would you ever of got any five dollars from any fish
man, if it hadn't been for me, pray? Pray, didn't I first sajest our
doing somep'n with the bugs we'd never forget, and if the fish man gives
us five dollars for 'em won't we remember it all our lives, pray? And,
pray, what part did you think up of all this, pray? Not one single
thing, and if you don't divide even with me, I'll run ahead and tell the
fish man the whole c'lection has been in bottles that had old medicine
and poison in 'em--and then where'll _you_ be, pray?"

It is to be doubted that Florence possessed the cold-blooded capacities
with which this impromptu in diplomacy seemed to invest he