“Oh, that will be fun!” laughed Sue, clapping her hands.  “Here comes Helen!” she cried a moment later, and then, with joyous shouts and laughter, a number of children came running into the Brown yard, ready to play barn store.

CHAPTER VIII

IN A HOLE

“What things are you going to sell?”

“Who’s going to tend store?”

“I want to be cashier!”

These were some of the things the boys and girls shouted as they ran into the barn where Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were waiting for them to play store.  Charlie Star, Helen Newton, fat Bobbie Boomer, Harry Bentley, George and Mary Watson and Sadie West were among the boys and girls who came crowding into the barn, for the day before Bunny and his sister had invited them to spend Saturday in having fun.

“We’ll take turns tending store,” explained Bunny, after he had shown his playmates the shelves and boxes that were to be used for shelves.

“And we’re going to have our dog Splash deliver things with a basket on his neck,” explained Sue.

“I should think it would be more fun to hitch up your pony Toby to the basket cart and have him to deliver things,” remarked Helen.

“We thought of that,” replied Bunny.  “But Bunker Blue has taken Toby down to the boat dock.  He has to do some errands for my father, so we can’t have Toby.”

As Bunny and his sister had played this game more than the others, they were allowed 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.”