Free Here's a Penny by Carolyn Haywood Page A

be heard scratching their claws on the floor.
    "I think I can get them, Mother," said Peter. "I can get under the seats more easily."
    Meanwhile, Minnie had gathered up the seaweed. She kept muttering over and over, "I never did trust crabs. They're just plain wicked."
    The aisle was now cleared of everything but Peter and Penny, who went crawling up and down looking for crabs. Peter had the pancake turner in one hand and the soup ladle in the other. Every once in a while he would chase a crab out from under a seat, put the pancake turner under it, the soup ladle on top of it, and drop it into the basket. Many a time he dropped the crab and had to begin over again, but by the time the train had gone halfway home, all of the wandering crabs had been caught and were safely back in the basket. They had settled down under the seaweed.

    Once, Penny looked down at the basket and said, "I'm glad we didn't lose the crabs, aren't you, Mummy?"
    "Well," replied Mother, "it would have been better to have left them in the ocean."
    "Oh, but Mother," said Penny, "they are such beautiful crabs!"
    "Beautiful crabs!" muttered Minnie. "Just full of meanness, that's what. Nothing beautiful about them."
    At the end of the journey, Mother asked the conductor if he would lift the basket off the train. Peter and Penny carried it safely to a taxicab.
    At last they reached home and Mother and Minnie breathed a sigh of relief.
    "I won't trust those crabs until I get them in the pot," said Minnie. And without taking off her hat, she put a big kettle of water on the stove.
    When the water was boiling, she threw the crabs in one by one. As she did so, she muttered to herself, "Beautiful crabs! I just hope I never travel again with crabs. The most awful good-for-nothing nuisance in the world is a crab."
    When they were done, Minnie laid the big fat crabs out on the kitchen table. Penny came into the kitchen. Minnie stood back and admired the crabs. Then a broad grin spread over her face. "My! Oh, my, Penny!" she said. "Aren't they beautiful crabs?"

C AROLYN H AYWOOD (1898–1990) was born in Philadelphia and began her career as an artist. She hoped to become a children's book illustrator, but at an editor's suggestion, she began writing stories about the everyday lives of children. The first of those, "
B" Is for Betsy,
was published in 1939, and more than fifty other books followed. One of America's most popular authors for children, Ms. Haywood used many of her own childhood experiences in her novels. "I write for children," she once explained, "because I feel that they need to know what is going on in their world and they can best understand it through stories."