Probably not, but she did enjoy extra spending money. Remember that this story (ostensibly, although see NancyLebovitz's comment) takes place long enough ago that a nickel could actually buy something.

If I were to assign a moral to the story, it would be something like "don't assume children aren't extremely clever". The girl not only understood the game on the object level, but also grasped the metagame and turned it to her advantage.

(The meta-moral for myself would be "remember that some of your relatives are senile enough to misremember jokes as autobiographical".)