e's only a
pretend-person, but I like to think she's real. I like to dream of her."

"I would, too," said Janet softly. "We mustn't catch any birds, Ted, nor
animals, either."

"Not if we let them go right off quick?" Ted asked.

"No," and Janet shook her head. "It might scare 'em you know. And the
box might fall on their legs, or their wings, if it's a bird, and hurt
them."

"Well, then, we won't do it!" decided Ted. "I wouldn't want to hurt
anything, and I wouldn't want to make your friend, Princess Blue Eyes,
feel bad," he added to Hal. He remembered the story Hal had told about
the make-believe Princess, when they sat in the green meadow studded
with yellow buttercups and white daisies.

"Let's play store!" suggested Jan. "There's lots of pretty stones and
shells on the shore, and we can use them for money."

"What'll we sell?" asked Hal.

"Oh, we can sell other stones--big ones--for bread, and sand for sugar
and leaves for cookies and things like that," Janet proposed.

"I wish we had something real to eat, and then we could sell that and it
would be some good," remarked Ted. "I'm going to ask Nora."

"Oh, that'll be fun!" cried Jan. "Come on, Hal. We'll get the store
ready and Ted can go in and ask Nora for some real cookies and maybe a
piece of cake."

Nora, good-natured as she always was, gave Ted a nice lot of broken
cookies, some crackers and some lumps of sugar so the children could
play store and really eat the things they sold. Hal gathered some mussel
shells and colored stones on the shore of the lake, and these were
money.

The store counter was made by putting a board across two boxes and they
took turns being the storekeeper. Trouble wanted to play, too. But he
only wanted to buy bits of molasses cookies, and he ate the pieces as
fast as he got them, without pretending to go out of the store to take
them home.

"Me buy more tookie!" he would say, swallowing the last crumb and
hurrying up to the board counter with another "penny," which was a
shell or a stone.

"You mustn't eat them up so fast, Trouble," said Janet. "Else we won't
have any left to play store with."

"Oh, well, we can get more from Nora," said Ted. "And the cookies taste
awful good."

They played store until there were no more good things left to eat and
Nora would not hand out any others from her boxes and pans in the
kitchen tent. Then the Curlytops and Hal got in the rowboat and paddled
about in the shallow cove.