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Page 67
"Fifty cents a bottle, if you give the bottle back," said Stella,
who felt that the lady's friendliness toward her demanded that she
should answer?
"Fifty cents a bottle!" exclaimed the lady. "Surely you can't mean
that! Why, pennyroyal extract isn't worth a cent a quart!"
The girls looked genuinely disturbed. This was a different
opinion, indeed, from that advanced by the pretty lady who had
bought three bottles!
Marjorie suddenly began to feel as if she were doing something
very foolish, and something which she ought not to have undertaken
without Grandma's advice.
"Is that all it's worth, truly?" she asked, looking
straightforwardly into the lady's eyes.
"Why, yes, my dear,--I'm sure it could not have a higher market
value."
"Then we don't want to sell you any," said Marjorie, whose sense
of honesty was aroused; and picking up her basket from the porch,
she turned toward the street, walking fast, and holding her head
high in the air, while her cheeks grew very red.
Molly followed her, uncertain as to what to do next, and Stella
trailed along behind, a dejected little figure, indeed, with her
heavy basket on her arm.
CHAPTER XVIII
WELCOME GIFTS
"It's all wrong!" declared Marjorie. "I didn't see it before, but
I do now. That lady was right, and we oughtn't to try to sell
anything that's worth less than a cent for fifty cents, or twenty-
five either."
"Shall we go home?" asked Molly, who always submitted to
Marjorie's decisions.
"_I_ don't think it's wrong," began Stella. "Of course the
pennyroyal isn't worth much, but we worked to get it, and to make
it, and to fix it up and all; and, besides, people always pay more
than things are worth when they're for charity."
Marjorie's opinion veered around again. The three were sitting on
a large stepping-stone under some shady trees, and Marjorie was
thinking out the matter to her own satisfaction before they should
proceed.
"Stella, I believe you're right, after all," she said. "Now I'll
tell you what we'll do: we'll go to one more place, and if it's a
nice lady, we'll ask her what she thinks about it, for I'd like
the advice of a grown-up."
This seemed a fair proposition, and the three wandered in at the
very place where they had been sitting on the stone.
With renewed courage, they rang the door bell. It was Marjorie's
turn to speak, and the words were on the tip of her tongue. Being
somewhat excited, she began her speech as the door began to open.
"Don't you want to buy some pennyroyal extract?" she said rapidly;
"it's perfectly fine for mosquitoes, measles, and burns, and
scarlet fever! It isn't worth a cent a quart, but we sell it for
fifty cents a bottle, if you give the bottles back. But if you
don't think it's right for us to sell it, we won't."
Marjorie would not have been quite so mixed up in her speech but
for the fact that after she was fairly started upon it, she raised
her eyes to the person she was addressing, and instead of a kind
and sweet-faced lady she beheld a very large, burly, and red-faced
gentleman.
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