“Please, mum,” he asked humbly, “do you sell fairy-tales here?”

Maida saw at once that it was one of Billy’s games. She had to bite
her lips to keep from laughing. “Yes,” she said, when she had made
her mouth quite firm. “How much do you want to pay for them?”

“Not more than a penny each, mum,” he replied.

Maida took out of a drawer the pamphlet-tales that Billy had liked
so much.

“Are these what you want?” she asked. But before he could answer,
she added in a condescending tone, “Do you know how to read, little
boy?”

Billy’s face twitched suddenly and his eyes “skrinkled up.” Maida
saw with a mischievous delight that he, in his turn, was trying to
keep the laughter back.

“Yes, mum,” he said, making his face quite serious again. “My
teacher says I’m the best reader in the room.”

He took up the little books and looked them over. “‘The Three
Boars’—no,‘Bears,’” he corrected himself. “‘Puss-in-Boats’—no,
‘Boots’; ‘Jack-and-the-Bean-Scalp’—no,‘Stalk’; ‘Jack the
Joint-Cooler’—no, ‘Giant-Killer’; ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Bluebird’—no,
‘Bluebeard’; ‘Little Toody-Goo-Shoes’—no, ‘Little Goody-Two-Shoes’;
‘Tom Thumb,’ ‘The Sweeping Beauty,’—no, ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘The
Babes in the Wood.’ I guess I’ll take these ten, mum.”