"
"You don't want much!" laughed Bert.
"Well, let's go in!" suggested Billy.
So, with the two boys in the lead, followed by Nell and Nan and Flossie
and Freddie, the children entered the second-hand and souvenir store.
A bell on the door rang with a loud clang as Billy opened it, and when
the children stepped inside the shop an old man with a black, curly
beard and long black hair that seemed as if it had never been combed,
came out from a back room.
"What you want to buy, little childrens?" he asked. "I got a lot of nice
things, cheap! Very cheap!"
"Well, if you've got something very cheap we might buy it," answered
Billy, with as nearly a grown-up manner as he could assume. "But we
haven't much money."
"Ha! Ha! That's what they all say!" exclaimed the old man. "But
everybody has more money that what I has. I'm very poor. I don't hardly
make a living I sell things so cheap. What you want to buy, little
childrens?"
"Have you got any whistles or fire engines?" burst out Freddie, unable
to wait any longer.
"Whistles? Lots of 'em!" exclaimed the man. "Here is a finest whistle
what ever was. Listen to it!"
He took one from the show case and blew into it.
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