"Is it a fire?" eagerly asked Freddie, as he wiggled about to get a better view of the window, since Bert and Nan stood so near it he could not see very well. "Is it a fire?"

"Oh, you and your fires!" laughed Nell, as she put her hands lovingly on his shoulders. "Don't you ever think of anything else?"

"Oh, is it a fire?" asked Freddie again.

"No, there isn't any fire," answered Billy, laughing, as his sister Nell was doing, at Freddie's funny ideas.

"But it's something!" insisted Flossie, who had, by this time, wiggled herself to a place beside Freddie, and so near the window that she could flatten her little nose against it.

"What is it you see, Nan?" asked Bert. "If it's more souvenirs I don't believe we can buy any. My money is 'most gone."

"Oh, but we must get these even if we have to go home for more money!"

exclaimed Nan. "Look, Bert! Right near those old bra.s.s candlesticks. See that sugar bowl and pitcher?"

"I see 'em!" answered Bert.

"Don't you know whose they are?" rapidly whispered Nan. "Look at the way they're painted? And see! On the bottom of the sugar bowl is a blue lion! I can't see the letters 'J. W.' but they must be there. Oh, Bert!

don't you know what this means? Can't you see? Those are Miss Pompret's missing dishes that she told us she'd give a hundred dollars to get back! And oh, Bert! we've got to go in there and buy that sugar bowl and cream pitcher, and we can take 'em back to Miss Pompret at Lakeport, and she'll give us a hundred dollars, and--and--"

But Nan was so excited and out of breath that she could not say another word. She could just manage to hold Bert's sleeve and point at the window of the second-hand shop.

At last Bert "woke up," as he said afterward. His eyes opened wider, and he stared with all his might at what Nan was pointing toward. There, surely enough, among some old candlesticks, a pair of andirons, a bellows for blowing a fire, was a sugar bowl and cream pitcher. And it needed only a glance to make Bert feel sure that the two pieces of china were decorated just as were Miss Pompret's.

But there was something more than this. The sugar bowl was turned over so that the bottom part was toward the street. And on the bottom, plainly to be seen, was a circle of gold. Inside the circle was a picture of some animal in blue, and Nan, at least, felt sure it was a blue lion. As she had said, no letters could be seen, but they might be there.

"Don't you see, Bert?" asked Nan, as her brother waited several seconds before speaking. "Don't you see that those are Miss Pompret's dishes?"

"Well," admitted the Bobbsey lad, "they look like 'em."

"They surely are!" declared Nan. "Oh, I'm so excited! Let's go right in and buy them. Then we'll get a hundred dollars!"

She darted away from Bert's side, and was about to move toward the door of the shop when Billy caught her by the coat sleeve.

"Wait a minute, Nan," he said.

"What for?" she asked.

"Until Bert and I talk this over," went on Billy, who, though he was not much older than Nan, seemed to be, perhaps because he had lived in a large city all his life. "You don't want to rush in and buy those dishes so quick."

"Why not?" demanded Nan. "If I don't get 'em somebody else may, and you know Miss Pompret offered a reward of a hundred dollars. These are the two pieces missing from her set. Her set is 'broken' as she calls it, if she doesn't have this sugar bowl and pitcher."

"Yes, I remember your telling me about Miss Pompret's reward," said Billy. "But you'd better go a bit slow."

"Maybe somebody else'll buy 'em!" exclaimed Nan.

"Oh, I don't believe they will," said Nell, "This is a quiet street, and this shop doesn't do much business. We only come here once in a while because some things are cheaper. We never bought any second-hand things."

"There's n.o.body coming down the street now," observed Bert, who was beginning to agree with Billy in the matter. "If we see any one going in that we think will buy the dishes, we can hurry in ahead of 'em. We'll stand here and talk a minute. What is it you want to say, Billy?"

"Well, it's like this," went on the Washington boy. "I know these second-hand men. If they think you want a thing they'll charge you a lot of money for it. But if they think you don't want it very much they will let you have it cheap. I know, 'cause a fellow and I wanted to get a baseball glove in here one day. It was a second-hand one, but good. The fellow I was with knew just how to do it.

"He went in, and asked the price of a lot of things, and said they were all too high. Then he asked the price of the glove, just as if he didn't care much whether he got it or not. The man said it was a dollar, but when Jimmie--the boy who was with me--said he only had eighty cents, the man let him have the glove for that."

"Oh, I see what you mean!" cried Nan. "You mean we must try to get a bargain."

"Yes," said Billy. "Otherwise, if you go in and want to buy those dishes first thing, the man may want five dollars for 'em."

"Oh, we haven't that much money!" cried Nan, much surprised.

"That's why I say we must go slow," said Billy. "Now you leave this to me and Bert."

"I think it would be a good idea," declared Nell.

"All right! I will," agreed Nan. "But, oh, I do hope we can get those dishes for Miss Pompret."

"And I hope we can get the reward of a hundred dollars," murmured Bert.

"I only hope they're the right dishes," said Billy.

"Oh, I'm sure they are," declared Nan. "They have the blue lion on and everything. And if they have the letters 'J. W.' on, then we'll know for sure. Let's go in and see."

"We've got to go slow," declared Billy. "Mustn't be too fast. Let Bert and me go ahead."

"I want to come in, too!" declared Freddie. "I want to buy a whistle. Do they have whistles in here?"

"I guess so," answered Bert. "It will be a good thing to go in and ask for, anyhow."

"Sort of excuse for going in," suggested Nell.

"Do they have ice cream cones?" asked Flossie. "I want something to eat."

"I don't believe they have anything to eat in here," said Nell. "But we can get that later, Flossie. Now you and Freddie be nice when we go in, and after we come out I'll get you some ice cream."

"I'll be good!" promised Flossie.

"So'll I," agreed Freddie. "But I want a whistle, and if they have a little fire engine I want that."

"You don't want much!" laughed Bert.

"Well, let's go in!" suggested Billy.

So, with the two boys in the lead, followed by Nell and Nan and Flossie and Freddie, the children entered the second-hand and souvenir store.

A bell on the door rang with a loud clang as Billy opened it, and when the children stepped inside the shop an old man with a black, curly beard and long black hair that seemed as if it had never been combed, came out from a back room.

"What you want to buy, little childrens?" he asked. "I got a lot of nice things, cheap! Very cheap!"

"Well, if you've got something very cheap we might buy it," answered Billy, with as nearly a grown-up manner as he could a.s.sume. "But we haven't much money."