During the next half hour the girls busied themselves playing store. Ruth was almost as keenly interested in the little place as was Nancy, herself, but it was noticeable that Vera was more curious. She poked into the farthest corners, even opening obscure little cubby-holes that Nancy had not yet discovered. All the while they talked about the Townsends and the mysterious Mr. Sanders, declaring that something around the Whatnot Shop held the clue to the Townsend disagreement, and Mr. Sanders’ mysterious power of disappearing.

“I think it’s the funniest thing,” ruminated Nancy, clapping the wrong cover on the white thread box, “here we came away out here to be peaceful, quiet and studious. Mother looked for a place just to keep Ted and me busy, and then we run into a regular hornet’s nest of rumors.”

“Don’t you know,” replied Ruth, “that still waters run deepest?”

“But I didn’t know we had to take on a whole Mother Goose set of fairy tales with a little two cent shoe-string shop,” protested Nancy. “Of course it will serve me right if I get into an awful squall. My rebellion against the long-loved house-work idea, is sure to get me into some trouble, isn’t it?”

“Who doesn’t rebel secretly?” admitted Ruth. “Isn’t it fairer to up and say so than to be always hoping the dishpan will spring a leak, and dish-towels will blow away?” Ruth was making rapid strides in gaining Nancy’s affection. She was so unaffected, so frank, and so sensible.

Vera wasn’t saying much but she was poking a lot. Just now she was fussing with some discarded and disabled toys. She held up a helpless windmill.

“Imagine!” she said, simply.

“Well, what of it?” asked Ruth. “It was pretty—once!”

“Pretty! As if anyone around here would ever buy a thing like that.”

“Let me see it,” Nancy said. “I’m sure Ted would love 'a thing like that.’ He’d spend days tinkering with it.” Nancy took the red and blue tin toy and inspected it critically. As she wound a tiny key a little bell tinkled.

“Lovel-lee!” cried Ruth. “That’s a merry wind. Or is it a tinkle-ly wind? Anyway it’s cute. Save it for the small brother, Nancy. And I think he’s awfully cute. Here’s something else for his camp,” she offered, handing Nancy over a red, white and blue popgun.

“Great!” declared Nancy. “Ted has been too busy to rummage yet, but he’s sure to be thrilled when he does go at it. Yes, I think Ted is cute, and I hope the disappearing man won’t cast a spell on him,” she finished, laughing at the idea, and meanwhile inspecting the toy windmill.

“You can joke,” warned Vera, “but my grandmother insists that what everyone says must be true, and everyone says Baldy Sanders is freakish.”

“Baldy,” repeated Nancy gaily. “I noticed that. But he has enough of eyes to make up for the lost hair. I never saw such merry twinkling eyes.”

“Really!” Vera commented. “I never notice men’s eyes.”

“Just their bald heads,” teased Ruth. “Now Vera, if Mr. Sanders is a professor, as some folks claim, and if he ever gets our class in chemistry, I’m afraid you would just have to notice his merry, twinkling eyes. Anyhow,” and Ruth cocked up a faded little blue muslin pussy cat, “he’s merry, and that is in his favor. What are you doing with that windmill, Nancy?”

“Inspecting it. It’s a queer kind of windmill. Look at the cross pieces on top and this tin cup.”

All three girls gave their attention to the queer toy. It was, as Nancy had said, different from the usual model. It had cross pieces on top instead of on the side, and one piece was capped off with a metal cup.

“I’ll save it for Ted,” Nancy concluded. “But I hope it isn’t dangerous. It takes boys to find out the worst of everything. Just before we moved, most of our furniture is in storage you know,” she put in to explain the scarcity of things at the country place, “Ted went up to the attic and found an old wooden gun. It would shoot peas, and what those boys didn’t shoot peas at wasn’t worth mentioning. I’ll put the freak windmill away for him, though. It looks quite harmless.”

“Oh, I think it’s just joyous to have a shop,” exclaimed Ruth, “and if you’ll let me, Nancy, I’ll come in and 'tend sometimes.”

“I’d love to have you,” replied Nancy earnestly. “I did expect my chum, Bonny Davis, to visit me, but she’s gone down to the shore first. Bonny’s lots of fun. I’m sure you’d like her if she does come,” declared Nancy, loyally.

“I like her name,” Ruth answered. “What is it? Bonita?”

“No, it’s really Charlotte, but she’s so black we’ve always called her Bonny from ebony, you know. Now Vera, what have you discovered?” broke off Nancy, looking over to the comer in which Vera was plainly interested. “Anything spooky?”

“Not spooky,” replied Vera, “but I never saw such odd looking fishing things. No wonder the Townsends went bankrupt. Here are boxes and boxes of wires and weights, and I don’t know what all. Oh, I’ll tell you!” she exclaimed, in a rare burst of enthusiasm. “Let’s have a fishing sale?”

“And sell fish!” teased Ruth.

“No,” objected Nancy, taking Vera’s part. “I think a special sale of fishing and sport supplies would be great. Let’s see what we’ve got toward it.”

“It would draw the boys and that’s something,” joked Ruth. “But I’ll tell you what, Nancy, you had better be careful what you try to sell to the young fishermen around here. They’re pretty particular and rather good at the sport. I like to fish myself.”

“Oh, I’d love to,” declared Nancy. “Where do you go?”

“Dyke’s pond and sometimes the old mill creek,” replied Ruth. “But we only get sunnies there. There’s perch in the pond, though.”

This led to discussing the fishing prospects in brooks, ponds and other waterways around Long Leigh, until it was being promptly decided that Ruth and Vera should very soon introduce Nancy to the sport. The idea of having a sale of the outfit at the shop was also entered upon enthusiastically, until the afternoon was melting into shadows before the girls realized it.

“But what ever you do,” Ruth cautioned Nancy, “don’t let any one induce you to take the Whatnot out of the window. That’s the sign of this old shop that’s known for miles and miles.”

“I think a cute little windmill would be lots nicer,” suggested Vera. “That Whatnot is—atrocious.”

“Windmill!” repeated Ruth. “But we don’t sell windmills.”

“Certainly not. Neither do we sell Whatnots,” contended Vera.

“But we sell the things that are on the Whatnot,” argued Ruth. “And besides Whatnot stands for What Not!”

It was amusing Nancy to listen to their assumed partnership. They were both talking about “our shop” and insisting upon what “we sell.” This established at once a comradeship among all three, and Nancy was convinced that her own desire to go into business was not, after all, very queer. Other girls, no doubt, shared it as well, but the difference was—Nancy’s mother. She was the “angel of the enterprise,” as Nancy had declared more than once.

“And I’ll tell you,” confided Vera, quite surprisingly, “if you’ll let me, I’ll help you with your housework. I don’t mind it a bit, and you hate it so.”

“Oh, that’s just lovely of you, Vera,” Nancy replied, while a sense of fear seized her, “but I really must do some of it, you know. Even a good store keeper should know how to cook a little,” she pretended, vowing that her house would be in some kind of order before Vera ever even got a peek into the living rooms.

When they were finally gone Nancy stood alone in the little store, too excited to decide at once which way to turn. She liked the girls, especially Ruth, and even Vera had her interesting features. At least she said odd things in an odd way, and her drawl was “delicious,” Nancy admitted. Of course she was gossipy. There was all that nonsense about Mr. Sanders. As if any human being could really disappear. Ted would just howl at the idea, Nancy knew, and if the man were really a professor of some sort, that ought to make him interesting, she reflected. At any rate, he was, the girls had said, a friend of the Townsends, and Nancy would make it her business to ask Miss Townsend about him the very next time she came into the store.

Her mind busy with such reflections, Nancy hooked the screen door, (the shop was not yet supposed to be open for business) and turned toward the upset kitchen.

“I’ve just got to do something with it,” she promised, “before mother comes. I wish Ted would hurry along home. Of course, he’s a boy and boys don’t have to worry about kitchens.”

Nevertheless, as Nancy dashed around she did make a real effort to adjust the disordered room, for her pride was now prompting her. Whatever would Vera Johns say to such a looking place? And was all this fair to a mother so thoughtful and so good-natured as was Nancy’s?

“I begin right here at this door,” she decided, feeling she had to begin at a definite spot, “and I just straighten out every single thing from here to the back door.”

Peach baskets idling with the odds and ends of packing, Ted’s red sweater, Nancy’s blue one, Nancy’s straw hat that she felt she must have within reach and which therefore had been “parked” on the floor, safe, however, under a big chair, and a paste-board box of books that she also didn’t want to lose track of, the portable phonograph cover, the phonograph itself was reposing safely on the corner of the sink where Ted had been trying a new record; all these and as many more miscellaneous articles Nancy was briefly encountering in her general clearing up plan “from one door to the other.”

But she forged on, the old broom doing heroic duty as a plough cutting through the dÉbris. Finally, having gotten most of the stuff into a corner, she undertook to scatter it in a way peculiar to one with business, rather than domestic, instincts.

“I’ll need the baskets, all of them, when I’m settling the store,” she promptly decided, “and I’ll get Ted to put the box of books in there too, so I can read while I’m waiting. Then the phonograph—That can go in there just as well, it may draw customers.” At this Nancy laughed, but she picked up the little black box, it had been her birthday present, and put it right on the small table under the old mantle in the store. A phonograph in the store seemed attractive.

“I guess we’ll find the store handy for lots of things,” Nancy was thinking, for the difference in the size of their old home, and the limits of this new one, was not easy to adjust.

With a sort of flourish of the broom at the papers and bits of excelsior that were still an eyesore about, Nancy at length managed to “make a path,” as she expressed it, through the kitchen.

“And I’ll gather some flowers to greet mother with,” she insisted. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t make a pretty room of a kitchen like this, with one, two, three, good sized windows,” she counted.

But the glorious bunch of early roses must have felt rather out of place, trying to conserve their wondrous perfume from contamination with the remains of a smudgy odor from burnt potatoes—which by-the-way, had not yet come to light, not to say anything of the real fire smell of burnt meat, that ran over from a pan-cake griddle into a seething gas flame.

“Oh, those flowers!” exhaled the triumphant Nancy, pushing the dishpan away so as not to bend the longest stalk, which was brushed against it. “Won’t mother just love it here?”

After all, is not the soul of the poet more valuable than the skill of a prospective housewife?