In an instant Kate Kearney was after it; there was a crash, a tumble—and a horse, a donkey, a tin pail, and a box of bricks lay on the floor. K.K., unabashed, seized the donkey and shook it. "Drop it! Drop it, K.K.!" The little urchin, after one glance round at the crash, went on staring at the treasure of treasures he had found on the counter—a small wooden table with pink and white cups and saucers, plates, tea-pot, milk jug, and sugar basin set out invitingly on a spotless white cloth. The last brick hunted out of the last corner and put back into its box, they turned their attention to their small customer again. Nell whispered quickly to Denis:— "Quick, before she comes back—pretend its fourpence halfpenny for _both_! _Don’t_ let him guess—it would spoil it all for him!" "Chosen anything yet?" Denis queried. "Take your time. We are accustomed to purchasers not being able to decide between the wondrous bargains we display. Now this," he waved aloft a particularly awful tin plate on which was painted in very vivid colours a big-headed little girl caressing a dog several sizes larger than herself, "this is a wonderful artistic product—after Landseer. You might think the animal was perchance an elephant—" "They’re fourpence ha’penny for the table, and fourpence ha’penny for the cups and things, in course," the urchin interpolated with a big sigh, and never a thought for Denis’s nonsense. "They beat everythink in the shop into fits!" "This table? This tea-set? Well, you’re a born shopper. Fourpence ha’penny for ’em both! Best valley I’ve got in the shop!" "’And ’em over, sir!" He held out his money in a grubby little hand that positively shook with eagerness. Then his fingers closed on it suddenly. He said with suspicion:— "Yer sure it’s for _both_? I ain’t got no more money, so it’s no use trying to bluff me into buying more’n fourpenny ’a’penny worth!" "My dear sir, this shop is above suspicion. Twenty-four year ’ave me and Jelks kep’ it!" He had seized a newspaper and was rolling it round the toys. "For twenty-four years has it stood in conscious rectitude—" "’Ere, don’t I git a box to put ’em in?" the urchin interrupted, unimpressed. "A box, is it?" Nell interposed, stern disapproval in her tone. "Of course you should have a box! He’s a most careless young man! There’s the box that the tea things fit into just at his elbow!" She watched delightedly his vain efforts to fit the cups and saucers into the shaped spaces cut into the cardboard. "Really," she observed to the urchin, "I wonder Mrs. Jelly has such a very foolish young man to attend to her shop!" "J-Jelks," came from the background in Molly’s voice and with Molly’s giggle. In dignified silence Denis sought valiantly to ram the sugar basin into the place where the milk jug belonged; he put a cup into a plate hole, the cup disappeared and ran about under the cardboard.