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“That is rather the idea,” said Judy. Her spirits were rising, though she couldn’t have told you why. “Things at a bazaar are usually for sale, aren’t they?”

“Everything?” said he—and he stroked the not resentful neck of Alcibiades; “this good little beast isn’t in the market, I’m afraid?”

“Why? Would you buy him?”

“I’d think twice before I said no. My mother is frightfully fond of dogs.”

Quite unreasonably Judy felt that she did not want to sell Alcibiades as a present to any one’s mother.

“The sketches,” she said.

“The sketches,” said he; “why, there’s Maidstone Church and Farley and Teston Lock and Allington. How much are they?”

She told him.

“I must have some. May I have a dozen? They’re disgracefully cheap, and I feel like an American pork man buying works of art by the dozen—for they are jolly good—and it brings back old times. I was quartered there once.”

“I knew it,” she said to herself. Alcibiades stood up with his paws on her arm. “Be quiet,” she said to him; “you mustn’t talk now, I’m busy.”