“Mother! Are you awake?”

“Yes, dear.”

“There’s someone knocking—”

“I’m getting up.”

The knocking continued.

“Hey there, Nan!” called out Ted. “Get up and answer that noise. See what your old sale did! Wake us all up—”

“Ted, hush! Be quiet, Mother’s going down—”

“You ought to go. It’s your bargain day.”

As usual Ted was charging Nancy with delinquency. He wasn’t really quarreling, but just talking, as Nancy defined it. Mrs. Brandon had been dressing when the early knock first sounded, so that she was able to get down stairs almost directly afterward.

A dread, a sort of feeling that something might happen in regard to that expensive outlay of goods left by the travelling salesman, seized Nancy. She crept to the top of the stairs to listen, but all she could hear was a man’s voice; his words were lost behind the closed doors.

She ventured down to the second landing. Her mother was chatting pleasantly with whoever the early visitor might be, and at the sound Nancy’s spirits rose.

“He’s no collector,” she decided, turning quickly back to her room and starting at once to dress. She must be ready early. All signs pointed to an early patronage, and although Ted had declared he would be up at daybreak, it was all right, Nancy concluded, for him to sleep until seven o’clock.

Her mother was calling in a subdued voice.

“Nancy, I’ll get breakfast now, as I hear you stirring,” she said. “I want to leave things ready for your lunch today, so I came down early.”

“All right, Mother,” Nancy replied over the balustrade. “I’ll be down soon. Who called?”

“Is Ted awake?” Mrs. Brandon was still restraining her voice.

“He was, but he isn’t,” half whispered Nancy. “Wait, I’ll run down and help, then come up and dress later—”

Curiosity was too much for Nancy’s patience, so she merely tucked her hair tidily into a cap, and in slippers and robe joined her mother who was preparing breakfast.

“Who was it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Why, your famous Mr. Sanders,” replied Mrs. Brandon, indifferently. “He wanted a little model of some sort, a windmill, it looked like. I happened to spy it—”

“The funny little windmill!” Nancy exclaimed. “Why, we were wondering what that was. Did he say it was a model?”

“Not exactly, but I judged it was. At any rate, dear, you mustn’t always be looking for mystery in Mr. Sanders’ doings. I would call him a very pleasant gentleman. Here, dear, stir this cereal. I want you and Ted to make sure you get enough proper food.”

Nancy stirred the meal, which was receiving a preliminary start before being put over the hot water in the double-cooker.

“But you see, Mum,” she remarked very quietly, “he is queer. Whatever could he want a thing like that for? And why did he come for it so early?” Nancy asked.

“He wanted it because it has something to do with his line, is the way he expressed it, and he came early because he has been away and just heard of your sale. If he waited later, he explained, the little windmill might have been swept away in the tumult,” Mrs. Brandon replied. This seemed to satisfy Nancy’s inquiries, but secretly Mrs. Brandon herself was just a little puzzled about Mr. Sanders. For instance, it had been very clear to her that he just laughed off, rather than explained, the purpose of the possible model. Something “in his line,” which he had forgotten to take away when the Townsends moved, seemed vague, to say the least.

Nancy was now eating her breakfast with her mother. She confessed to having waked more than once during the night, in anticipation of the big day.

“And I’m going to send you a little surprise treat for lunch,” her mother confided. “I want you and the girls to enjoy yourselves in spite of your self-imposed business tasks, so I’m sending out some—ice cream!”

“Oh, Mumsey—love!” exclaimed Nancy, jumping up and in giving her mother a bear hug almost spilling the last spoonful of grape fruit. “Aren’t you too ducky! We’ll have a regular party, and I’ll ask—How many have you ordered for?” she demanded abruptly.

“Two quart bricks. That’s counted twelve servings,” replied her mother. “Of course, one brick is for Ted, and you must help him a little.”

“Of course, Mumsey-love,” promised Nancy. “We’ll get every body out and close up shop from one until two, and have a regular party!”

From that time until Nancy was almost, but not quite, ready “for the fray,” as she expressed it, she kept herself in a flutter of excitement. Her mother went into town as usual on the seven forty-five trolley, and even then there was a waiting list at the front door of the shop, children peering in the two broad windows which looked out onto the old-fashioned long porch.

“Come on, Ted, hurry-up,” begged Nancy as her brother tarried over his breakfast. “The girls won’t be here until eight, and you’ve got to go outside and try to keep those boys quiet. They’ll be coming through the window if you don’t.”

“Oh, that’s Buster, making all that racket,” declared Ted, getting another look at the paper which he was not supposed to read at the table. “I’ll go out and talk to them, in a minute,” he promised laconically.

“Please do, then,” begged his sister. “You take it as easy as if we didn’t have a big responsibility.”

“What responsibility?” he asked, actually deciding to move his plump little self from the table. “I can’t see what you’re all so excited about.”

“Of course you can’t. But I’ll tell you. Everybody, for miles and miles, knows about this sale, and we’ve got to get busy.” Nancy was peering anxiously out of the side window. “I do hope,” she said again, “that the girls will get here soon.”

“Is that Very-scary girl coming?” asked Ted. He was trying to set his blouse straight around his sun-burned neck.

“You mean Vera. She’s gone away for a while—”

“I hope she stays away,” snapped Ted. “I can’t seem to like her—”

“I’m sure that’s too bad,” mocked Nancy. “She would feel dreadfully bad to hear that.”

“Oh, don’t be funny. Listen! They’re hammering on the door. You had better open it or they’ll break the glass,” cautioned the boy.

“Dear me, Ted,” exclaimed the excited Nancy, “I can’t go; perhaps you had better open it. Why didn’t you fix up a little,” she argued, looking critically at the usual vacation boy. “You might at least have put on a white blouse.”

“To sell fish hooks?” roared Ted. “That’s a grand idea. Why, Nan, the fellows would think I was giving a party—”

The noise at the front of the store was now becoming so insistent that both brother and sister found it imperative to respond.

“Come on,” said Nancy, sighing rather miserably. “We may as well face it. But don’t let them back of the rope. We can’t wait on more than a few at a time.”

At that Nancy and Ted entered the store.

“Look—at—them!” gasped Ted.

Faces were pressed against the windows, the door, against every inch of outside space that could command a view of inside the store, and they looked so funny, the flat noses, the white spots on cheeks, the opened mouths, humping against the glass!

“Hello! Hello!” shouted Ted as Nancy fumbled with the door lock. “What do you think this is? A circus?”

Then, as Nancy opened the door, there was the unavoidable falling in!

“Please!” she begged. But the boys seemed actually massed as for some game.

“Hey there!” urged Ted. “Whoever doesn’t behave can’t get waited on a-tall!”

But his words had no effect upon the eager urchins.

“I want that rod over there!” shouted Rory Jennings. He was tall, big and noisy.

“That’s mine—that beaut in the window,” insisted another. Ted called him Shedder, or something that sounded like that.

“Hey, please, missus please,” begged a lad so freckled Nancy couldn’t see anything else but freckles. “Please missus,” he entreated, “couldn’t you just hand me over that crab net? That’s all I want.”

“Hey there! Stop crowdin’,” ordered a boy who was using all his strength to make matters worse. “She can’t wait on us if you don’t give her a chanst.”

There were easily twenty-five or thirty youngsters in the crowd, and Nancy felt quite helpless to supply all their wants at once. The fact that goods were offered at the very lowest figure possible, that a twenty-five cent ball of fish line was marked ten cents, of course, accounted for the rush. Many boys could get hold of a dime, but a quarter was not so easy to pick up, it seemed.

Then, too, the advertising, one boy telling the other, had done much to make the sale known; hence the early morning rush.

“Now don’t muss everything up!” ordered Ted, for a group of boys had laid hold of the fish-hook box, and it was impossible for Nancy to get it back.

“You must not take things away from the counter,” she protested, for at that moment the box of sinkers was being carted off to the door, by Jud Morgan and Than Beach. They said they only wanted to pick out a couple where there was more room, but it was plainly a risky way to make their selection.

“Dear me!” sighed Nancy to Ted. “Please look out and see if the girls are coming. These boys will have everything upset—”

But the girls were coming, in fact they were just then elbowing their way in from the front door.

“Hello—hello—hello!” called out Ruth joyfully. “Isn’t this grand! Going to buy us out first thing—”

“Oh, land sakes!” wailed Nancy. “I’ve been in here fifteen minutes and I haven’t sold a stick. We should have charged admission.”

Isabel looked on rather importantly. Evidently she knew or thought she knew how to handle a crowd of boys.

“You’ve got to get in line!” she announced.

A laugh, a whole series of laughs was her answer.

“Do you hear me?” she insisted, raising her voice to suit the occasion.

“Sure, we hear you. Want us to clap?” answered impudent Sammy Larkins.

“Now see here,” Ruth attempted to order. “If you boys really want to buy anything you have got to stand back and take turns—”

No sooner had that order been given than everybody made a dash for the first place in line, and the tumult that followed all but drove Nancy under the counter.

“Say, look here! Want us to put you all out?” demanded Ted, in unassumed indignation.

“Try it!” tempted Buster, pretending to roll up sleeves he didn’t have.

“But don’t you want to see the things?” cried out Ruth in desperation, for those boys were tumbling around the floor and actually fighting, at least they made that kind of noise, it seemed to the girls.

“Su-ure!” came a chorus.

Then Nancy had an inspiration. She got up on the high stool that stood by what used to be Miss Townsend’s desk and she immediately commanded attention.

“I’ll tell you,” she began, “if you all sit down on the floor just where you are, the window sills or any place, I’ll tell you about some of the most interesting things we’ve got here. They are not for sale, but they belonged to a sea captain—”

The magic word had the desired effect. At the word “sea captain” that crowd of boys, dropped “in their traces,” and it was then Nancy’s duty to unfold to them some wondrous tale.

For boys like a story—when it’s about a sea captain even if they are out to buy bargain fishing tackle.