"All right, give the child what he wants!" Bet agreed.
"Auntie Gibbs must have thought we were going to feed all of Lynnwood. Sending down a lunch this size!" laughed Shirley.
"But that's so much better than not having enough. Wait until we've finished it, there won't be much left. I know what kind of an appetite I have, and when Bob gets to work he'll eat about half of what's here."
"Aren't you going to wash that orange streak off your face, Phil?" asked Bet.
While the young people were making merry over their lunch, the door of the shop opened and shuffling feet were heard outside in the front room.
Bet jumped up excitedly, "Maybe it's a customer! Oh girls!"
"Oh, I hope it isn't!" exclaimed Shirley. "We haven't got anything for sale yet."
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Gruff," Bet's voice was heard from the back room. "You are our first visitor."
"What you doing here?" Peter asked abruptly.
"Listen to the old grouch," whispered Joy to Shirley. "One would think he owned this store."
"Ssh! Keep quiet, Joy. Let's hear what he's saying."
Bet answered the old man in her sweetest manner. "We're opening an art shop. We'll be your next door neighbor, Mr. Gruff."
"Not just at present. Perhaps later we may," answered Bet.
"Don't do it. There's no money in antiques! Not a penny. Of course if you want them, I'll be able to get them for you. I go to all the auctions. I went away out to Connecticut the other day to get some old lamps."
"And did you get them? What were they like?" questioned Bet.
"I didn't get them. They went too high. That's the reason I say there's no money in antiques. It used to be one could pick up things for almost nothing."
"Yes people learned to value their old things."
"Are you Colonel Baxter's girl? I thought so! Now there's a man who knows antiques. Can't get ahead of him on a buy. He knows just what a thing should sell for and half the time he can tell me to a penny what I paid for it."
Bet laughed heartily at this, for she remembered her father telling her how old Peter had tried to sell him some candlesticks at an exorbitant price.
"Seein' as it's you, Colonel Baxter," he had said, "You can have this pair of candlesticks for fifteen dollars."
"Too much, Mr. Gruff," the Colonel answered emphatically.