Shall I have a half?
Do I hear it?
Half, half, half; and sold at three dollars and a quarter to Mr .-- -what name, please?
Elder.

Oh yes; good old name, and one you can live up to more and more every day of your life.

John, pick out a hundred of the best for Mr.
Elder." The oranges selected by John were such beauties that neither Mark nor his mother regretted the extra quarter paid for them.

After that, during the rest of their stay in Key West, whenever Mark went near a fruit auction he was addressed politely by the auctioneer as "Mr.
Elder," and invited to examine the goods offered for sale that day.
One day Mark and Ruth rowed out among the vessels of the sponging fleet that had just come in from up the coast.

Here they scraped acquaintance with a weather-beaten old sponger, who sat in the stern of one of the smallest of the boats, smoking a short pipe and overhauling some rigging; and from him they gained much new information concerning sponges.
"We gets them all along the reef as far as Key Biscayne," said the old sponger; "but the best comes from Rock Island, up the coast nigh to St.
Mark's." "Why, that's where we're going!" interrupted Ruth.
"Be you, sissy?
Wal, you'll see a plenty raked up there, I reckon.