Value
She held out her little right hand and presented me the two coins that she had just picked up from my desk.
'Can I keep them?' she asked.
'I will give you one of them, if you like. But you have to choose carefully. They have different values, you know?'
'How many sweets will they buy me?' she wanted to know.
'Well the smaller one won't buy you any sweets, I am afraid. You would need to collect a few more of them for that. The other one will buy you a chocolate bar. Maybe even two.' I replied.
'That is easy then, the bigger one is worth more!' she said firmly.
'Well,' I interrupted her, 'things have different meanings to different people. I would choose the smaller one myself, as for me it stands for friendship between people from very different places; whereas this one stands for loneliness and fear.'
'Is this why there is an old lady on it? Old people are very often lonely, like Frau Kaiser from upstairs. I like Frau Kaiser, though.' she said.
'I do not know if this woman feels lonely,' I replied, 'but she is very famous, she is the Queen of England. And of Scotland and Wales, too.'
She was rubbing her nose, like she always did when she was considering her options.
'I want the friendship one, then!' she eventually said.
'That is a very good choice.' I replied and handed her the two Cents.
'I have an idea how we could turn the other coin into a friendship coin as well.' she said while looking down at her feet.
'Well, that is a lovely idea, but how would you want to do that?'
'Easy!', she burst out, 'we take your old-lady coin and bring it to the corner shop to buy two chocolate bars. One for us and one for Frau Kaiser. Would that work?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I think that would work perfectly well. Take your jacket and let's go...'