t a pig to sell will you carry it in too and sell it for me?"
asked Charlie quite gravely. "You would put it in the window for me,
wouldn't you, so that people could see it?"

"Of course," answered Tom, with equal gravity, "if you would sit there and
make it behave. We don't want the window broken, for we haven't insured
it yet, and we don't want all our things spoilt."

"It would be a wonderful attraction," went on Charlie thoughtfully, as
though he had not heard his brother; "it would draw crowds, and give you
such a start-off. I think you'd have to pay me so much an hour, it would
be such a fine advertisement."

"It would draw people to the window, but I don't know that it would bring
them inside," laughed Bella.

"Of course people would think you were for sale too," said Margery;
"it would be awkward if they wouldn't buy the pig unless you went with
it----" But her sentence was never finished, for Charlie chased her out
of the kitchen, and they finished their dispute in the garden.

"We'll begin tea; we won't wait for those harum-scarums," said Aunt Emma,
lifting a tart out of the oven; and the four drew cosily round the table.

Bella always loved those evening meals at the end of the long day in
market, when they sat and enjoyed at their leisure the good things Aunt
Emma provided, while they talked over all that had happened at home and
abroad.

To-day seemed a day set apart, a special day, for had not their father
walked to the milestone to meet them? This, in Bella's eyes, was a more
important event than the taking of the shop. From the garden came sounds
of laughter and screaming, the sober clucking of the hens, and the louder
calling of Margery's ducks.

"We shall be very lonely, Emma, when these two are away all day, shan't
we? I don't know what we shall do, do you?"

Their father spoke half-jestingly, yet there was something in his tone
which was far removed from jesting. Tom looked from Bella to his father
and back again. With his eyebrows he seemed to be asking her a question,
and evidently she understood and signalled her answer.

"Father," said Tom nervously, for he was always rather shy of speaking
before others, "we've thought out a plan, and we wondered if you'd fall in
with it, or--be able to, or----"

"Well, my boy, I will if I can, if--well, if it isn't one to benefit me
only. It seems to me you're all thinking always what'll be best and
pleasantest for me, and I ain't going to