“Let’s do that!” agreed Billy.  “There’s heaps of good things to eat in the market,” he added to Bert.  “It makes you hungry to go through it.”

“Then I don’t want to go!” laughed Bert.  “I’m hungry now.”

“I know where we can get some nice hot chocolate,” said Nell.  “It’s in a drug store, and mother lets Billy and me go there sometimes when we have enough money from our allowance.”

“Oh, I’m going to treat!” cried Bert.  “I have fifty cents, and mother said I could spend it any way I pleased.  Come on and we’ll have chocolate.  It’s my treat!”

“We may go, Mayn’t we, Jane?” asked Nell, of the maid who had accompanied them.

“Oh, yes,” was the smiling answer.  “If you go to Parson’s it will be all right.”

And a little later six smiling, happy children, and a rosy, smiling maid were seated before a soda counter sipping sweet chocolate, and eating crisp crackers.

After that Billy and Nell took the Bobbsey twins to the market, which is really quite a wonderful place in Washington, and where, as Billy said, it really makes one hungry to see the many good things spread about and displayed on the stands.

“I think we’ve been gone long enough now,” said the maid at last.  “We had better go back.”

So, after looking around a little longer at the part of the market where flowers were sold and where old negro women sold queer roots, barks, and herbs, the Bobbsey twins and their friends started slowly back toward the Martin house.

On the way they passed a store where china and glass dishes were sold, and there were many cups, saucers and plates in one of the windows.

“Wait a minute!” cried Bert, as Billy was about to pass on.  “I want to look here!”

“What for?” Billy asked.  “You don’t need any dishes!”

“I want to see if Miss Pompret’s sugar bowl and cream pitcher are here,” Bert answered.  “If Nan or I can find them we’ll get a lot of money, and I could spend my part while I was here.”

“Why Bert Bobbsey!” cried Nan, “you couldn’t find Miss Pompret’s things here—­in a store like this.  They only sell new china, and hers would be secondhand!”

“I know it,” admitted Bert.  “But there might be a sugar bowl and pitcher just like hers here, even if they were new.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Nan.  “There couldn’t be any dishes like Miss Pompret’s.  She said there wasn’t another set in this whole country.”

“Well, I don’t see ’em here, anyhow!” exclaimed Bert, after he had looked over the china in the window.  “I guess her things will never be found.”

“No, I guess not,” agreed Billy, to whom, and his sister, Nan told the story of the reward of one hundred dollars offered by Miss Pompret for the return of her wonderful sugar bowl and cream pitcher, while Bert was looking at the window display.

“Well, did you have a good time?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, when her twins came trooping back.