"It's awfully kind of you, mother dear, but it's too large a sum for Sara to spend."
"Tut, tut!" replied grandmother. "Children are never too young to learn to buy one good thing in place of a thousand small ones. I want this to be an early lesson to Sara, by which she will learn how one good thing lasts, while money frittered away gives pleasure to no one. How much is this, Sara?"
"More'n half a dollar. Robert told me," Sara replied confidently.
"Four half dollars," her grandmother corrected. "And how much is four half dollars? Each half dollar is fifty cents, and fifty cents is fifty pennies, and if you were to give these two dollars and ask for pennies, they would give you two hundred pennies."
"How many is two hundred pennies?" asked Sara, "as many as this?" She cupped her hands together.
Numbers meant nothing to her. It was always a marvel to her when her mother took her in a shop and with a little silly ten-cent piece purchased not only candy but received bright gilt pennies in exchange as well, and now apparently one could take this uninteresting-looking piece of paper and get pennies for it, handfuls of them. The world was bright.
"That's what I'm going to buy with that," she announced. "Two hundred pennies, bright ones. I'll put them in my bank-bing! I'll put them in Jamie's bank-bing! And then I can buy things and things and things at the five- and ten-cent store. There's a great, big, long five- and ten-cent store where we're going, bigger than ours! I saw it Christmas! Mother took me. If Robert's good I'll give him eleven pennies, seventeen, maybe," she prattled on.
