to lay out the plans. Bunny showed the boys how the boards
were to be put across the boxes to make shelves, and Sue took the girls
down to the brook to gather little pebbles and the shells of fresh water
mussels which were to be used for money, as there were going to be so
many "customers" for the barn store that Mrs. Brown's buttons would not
be enough to make change.

"What things are we going to sell?" asked Charlie, as he began pulling
something from his pocket.

"Oh, we'll get stones, sand, gravel, some leaves, pieces of bark,
twigs, and things like that," Bunny explained. "But what you got in your
pocket, Charlie?"

"My wind-up auto. I thought maybe we could use it in the store."

"How?"

"Well, it could be like a cash register. You see," Charlie went on,
"somebody's got to be the cashier just as in a big store. We'll have
different clerks, and when anybody buys anything they must pay the money
to whoever is clerk."

"Yes," agreed Bunny, who understood thus far.

"Then," went on Charlie, "the clerk must put the money the customer pays
into my auto, and send it on a plank up to the cashier's desk. The
cashier will make change and send it back in the auto."

"Oh, that'll be great!" cried Bunny. "And I guess you ought to be the
cashier for thinking it up, Charlie."

"Well, maybe I ought, 'cause it's my auto," Charlie said. He had been
hoping for this all along. "Now I'll make myself a place to be
cashier," he went on, "and I'll fix up a long plank for the auto to run
back and forth on. One winding will bring it up to me and back to the
clerk."

When the other children heard this plan they were much delighted. Soon
the store was ready for business. Boards had been placed across the
boxes and a tier of shelves made, the top one so high that a long box
had to be used like a stepladder to reach it. On the shelves were placed
different things picked up around the barn, in the yard, and in the
patch of woods not far away, or brought from the shore of the brook.

Then the boys and girls divided themselves up, some were to be customers
to buy things in the store, while others were to be clerks to wait on
the customers. Charlie took his place at the end of the tier of shelves
to act as cashier. From the end of the shelves to his box ran a long
narrow plank on which the auto change-carrier was to run.

Finally everything was ready, even to torn pieces of newspaper in which
the things bought were to be wrapped.