"That's what! be you the candy boy? lozenges, tutti-frutti and pepsin chewin' gum, chocolate creams, stick candy--what'll you have, young feller?" "I want a stick of checkerberry!" said the boy. "So do I!" cried a little girl in a pink gingham frock, who had run out from the house and climbed on the other gate-post. She was a pretty curly little creature, and the boy was an engaging compound of flaxen hair, freckles and snub nose. Calvin regarded them benevolently, and pulled out a drawer under the seat of the wagon. "Here you are!" he said, taking out a glass jar full of enchanting red and white sticks. "Best checkerberry in the State of Maine; cent apiece!" and he held out two sticks. The children's eyes grew big and tragic. "We ain't got any money!" said the boy, sadly. "Not _any_ money!" echoed the little girl. "Then what in time did you ask for it for?" asked Calvin rather irritably. "I didn't!" said the boy. "I just said I wanted it." Calvin looked from him to the girl, and then at the candy, helplessly. "Well, look here!" he said. "Say! where do hossy and me come in? We've got to get our livin', you see." "Could you get much living out of two sticks?" asked the little girl. Calvin looked again at the round wistful eyes. "This ain't no kind of way to do business!" he remonstrated. "You've got to airn it some way, you know. Tell you what! Let me see which can holler loudest, and I'll give you a stick apiece." The babes closed their eyes, threw back their heads, and bellowed to the skies. "That's first rate!" said Calvin. "Good lung power there, young uns! go it again!" The children roared like infant bulls of Bashan. At this moment the door of the house flew open and a woman appeared wild-eyed. "What's the matter?" she cried. "Susy, be you hurt? Eben, has something bit you?" "Don't you be scairt, Marm!" said Calvin affably. "They was just showin' off their lung power, and they've got a first rate article of it." The woman's eyes flashed, and she hurried toward the gate. "You come along and be spanked!" she cried to the children; "scarin' me into palpitations, and your Aunt Mandy layin' in a blue ager! And as for you," she addressed Calvin directly, "the best thing you can do is to get out of this the quickest you know how. When I want peddlers round here I'll let you know." The children were hurried into the house, shrieking now in good earnest, but clutching their candy sticks. Calvin gazed after them ruefully. "Well, hossy, that didn't seem to work real good, did it?" he said. "Fact is, we ain't got the hang of this business, no way, shape or manner. Try to please the kids and you get 'em a spankin' instead. Well, they got their candy anyway. 'Pears as if their Ma needed somethin', howsomever."