And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes
and a smutched and insufficient dress.
"Mamma says," she recited shrilly, "that you must give me eighty cents
for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to buy
hokey-pokey with--but she didn't say that," the elf concluded, with a
hopeful but honest grin.
Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the
total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents.
"That's the right kind of a law," remarked Finch, as he carefully broke
some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly come off
within a few days--"the law of supply and demand. But they've both got
to work together. I'll bet," he went on, with his dry smile, "she'll get
jelly beans with that nickel--she likes 'em. What's supply if there's no
demand for it?"
"What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously.
"Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was Shane came in and
bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now."