The gathering tittered derisively. Came a bid of forty cents as a reward for his efforts.

"Forty cents," the droning voice went on. "Forty cents—forty—forty, fifty cents, I thank you—fifty cents, fifty cents, fifty-five, fifty-five, going at fifty-five, fifty-five, better than nothing, fifty-five—"

"EIGHTY-FIVE!" shouted John.

"Sold," concluded the auctioneer. "Sold to our friend here at eighty-five cents. Will the lucky purchaser step up to the cashier?"

With the precious package safely in his pocket, the boy darted for the car line. Another hour had elapsed, and he dreaded the "penny lecture" which must be awaiting him on his arrival.

But inside the street car, though the air was stifling, and large, heedless grown-ups crushed him with each jolt of the uneven roadbed, his spirits rose buoyantly.

His holiday shopping was concluded. Christmas was less than a week away, and he had a vision of a beautifully hand-painted vanity box with a glistening solid gold-filled top greeting him from Louise's chiffonier when his thousand dollars had been achieved and the age of twenty-one reached which allowed him the independence of marriage.



CHAPTER XI

HE HAS A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Christmas Eve! Home to a six-o'clock supper after the daily paper distribution was finished, and then to bed, "'Cause going to bed early makes Christmas come sooner, Mother!"

On the back porch, the tree, a big, bushy-branched fir, lay waiting to be carried into the front hall. The lower floor was filled with mysterious packages, so disguised by bulky wrappings that their contents could not even be surmised, and all over the house, from the attic where the tree decorations were stored, to the holly-trimmed parlor hovered an air of holiday expectancy.

He loved that thrill, did John. Earlier, the possibilities which Santa's visit held furnished it to him, for who was to know which of the many needs that personage would see fit to satisfy? And the very Christmas after he had exposed the old fellow as a delightful, kindly fraud, he had sheepishly asked his parents to decorate the tree and arrange the gifts as before, "'Cause being surprised is the best part of Christmas."

That night when he had caught Santa! The memory of it brought a retrospective smile to his lips, in spite of the shivers which the chilled bed sheets sent through his warm little body. Awakened by a noise below, he had drawn the old bathrobe about him as protection from the frosty air, and tiptoed into the dark hallway. Well around the stair landing, a scene met his eyes!

There stood the tree, wedged firmly into the soapbox support with flat irons around the base for ballast. In one corner of the room, a Noah's ark, which later came to an untimely end on a mud-puddle cruise, had spilled its assortment of cardboard animals out on the carpet. Near the doorway lay a red fireman's suit, and in the dining-room, bending over the candy-filled cornucopias on the table were his father and mother.

"W-where's Santa Claus?" he had stammered, not grasping the situation at first. A sharp, gasping breath of surprise came from his mother as his father broke into chagrined laughter.

"I guess you've found him, son," had been the reply. And that was the end of Santa Claus.

A few moments later, a long, empty freight train rattled cityward unnoticed, as John's regular breathing told off, faithfully as any timepiece, the fast lessening minutes which stood between him and Christmas Day.

He wakened with a start. The late, gray dawn of winter was peering in between the window shades and the sashes, casting hesitant shadows about the room. He rubbed his eyes sleepily for a moment, then, remembering, sprang to his feet and opened the blinds.

A dun railroad embankment lay before him, with lighter streaks which told where the shining rails lay. Over on the boulevards, the arc lights twinkled sleepily, their long night vigil nearly finished. The barren tree tops which skirted the park, made a lace work against the frosty, winter's sky, and here and there, chance rays of light threw piles of rubbish in the big lot into unlovely relief. The same kindly, grimy, disorderly neighborhood of the day before and the year before, and yet the spirit of Christmas cast a halo over the whole and beautified it in the boy's eyes.

"It's Christmas, it's Christmas," he repeated over and over again as he drew on his clothes.

Then for a tiptoed scamper down the stairs for a view of the surprises which were awaiting him in the hall below.

A scent of pine, reminiscent of the sweet-scented Michigan forests, made him sniff eagerly. There towered the tree on the spot where its predecessors had stood in front of the fireplace, so tall that the tip barely missed the ceiling. Gleaming spheres caught the light from the stair window in brilliant contrast with the dark, needled depths. Cornucopias, candy laden, weighted the boughs. Sugar chains made symmetrical festoons of beads as they looped down from the upper branches, and innumerable candles stood stiffly in their holders, waiting for the taper in his father's hand to bring them to life.

Underneath the tree lay his presents. Not so many, perhaps, oh, sons of richer parents, as you may have had, but John's eyes grew wider and wider with delight as each object greeted him.

There lay the sled, long, low and scarlet, not as ornate as the expensive "Black Beauty," for which he had longed, but quite as serviceable. At the terminal of a railway system which encircled the tree base, stood a queer, foreign mechanical engine, with an abbreviated passenger car, and on a corner of the sheet which was to protect the carpet from candle drip, was a dry battery and diminutive electric motor. Then there were books—Optics, The Rover Boys, and others of their ilk—which would furnish recreation for months to come, regardless of his rapid reading.

Of course he turned the switch and listened to the hum of the little motor until the battery threatened to be exhausted; of course the railway was put into immediate and repeated operation, regardless of the noise which might awaken his parents. And he stood up, at least three times, sled pressed tightly against his chest, and made imaginary dashes down the park toboggan, outspeeding even the long bobsleds as the ice flew beneath him. Then he glanced at the title pages of the books again and even read a page or two from each opening chapter that he might know which would have the honor of being chosen for first consumption by his hungry mind. Finally, he stretched out on his back beneath the tree and gazed upward, watching each glistening detail in utter content.

Voices upstairs told John that his parents had wakened at last. Up the winding flight as fast as his little legs could carry him, and into the big south room with a cry of, "Oh, Mother! Mother! Daddy! it's just fine!"

"Happy, son?" asked his mother as he snuggled down beside her on the bed.

He nodded. Happy? Who wouldn't be with all those treasures in his possession? Mr. Fletcher chuckled.

"There's a box on your mother's bureau which we forgot to put under the tree," he said. "You can open it here if you wish."

The boy was up and back in a trice, this time to his father's bed, where he sat and tugged at the pink string fastenings until a set of doll's dishes came in sight.

"That's in answer to that list of yours," he was told. "Think those will do for your flat, son?"

"Louise'll like 'em," he smiled unabashed. "I'll give 'em to her with my other present."

More chuckles, more smiles, and more laughter. What matter if all else in the world went wrong, if the Spirit of Christmas reigned supreme in that family for the day?

"What did you see in the parlor, John?" asked his father.

"Something in the parlor?" The boy was on his feet again. "Where?"

"Wait a minute until I get my bathrobe and I'll go with you."

A little later, the two descended the stairway, hand in hand. John's gaze followed his father's pointing finger as they stood on the parlor threshold. In front of the dead grate, was a three foot, denim-covered, cabinet. From the square opening at the top hung half a dozen or so of limp, dangling figures.

"Punch and Judy!" John could scarcely believe his eyes. "Oh, Daddy! Daddy!"

In a moment, Punch was on his right hand and Judy on his left as he wiggled his fingers back and forth to see if they worked as did the showman's at Neighborhood Hall. Judy bobbed up on the stage as his father beamed down at him.

"Mr. Punch, Mr. Punch," she called. But her voice had neither the range nor the strength which Judy demanded to be successful, and he drew the marionettes off his fingers.

"Here," he said to his father, "you work 'em. Mine don't act right."

Nothing loath, Mr. Fletcher stretched himself out on the floor behind the little cabinet. John shifted to the front and watched eagerly with his head resting on his hands.

What a Punch and Judy show it was that ensued! Mr. Fletcher, drawing on his fertile imagination, invented a new set of domestic quarrels for the unhappy couple, brought in a doctor and a clown, (two lifelike dolls which supplemented the original, limited performers), and kept John shrieking with laughter until the ruddy-faced little devil brought the performance to a close in the time-honored way. Subdued laughter in the doorway made them both look up with a start. There stood Mrs. Fletcher, fully dressed, with a smile on her face.

"John senior," she ordered with mock severity, "go upstairs and dress yourself for breakfast immediately. I do believe you're the biggest boy of the two in spite of your age."

After the morning meal had been eaten, John devoured the contents of a candy-filled cornucopia from the tree, and drew on his stocking cap, coat, and mittens. Louise's presents were to be delivered, and that was a matter which brooked no unseemly delay.

Mrs. Martin's sister answered his ring at the apartment.

"Louise home?" he inquired eagerly.

Her aunt explained that Louise had gone out of town with her mother for a three-day Christmas visit.

"She'll be back, the day after tomorrow," she consoled him.

So he left the presents in her charge with instructions to give them to his lady on the very moment of her arrival, and scampered down the carpeted stairway again.

Sid DuPree met him in front of his house. John surveyed him warily.

"'Lo!"

"'Lo!"

"What'd your folks give you?"

"Oh, lots of things. What'd you get?"

Sid stopped a moment to recount his various gifts, lest one of them be omitted in the effort to impress his neighbor.

"'Nother football," he boasted. "Cost five dollars, it did."

"I got a railway with forty-'leven pieces of track."

"My uncle sent me a peachy pair of boxing gloves," Sid continued.

"Just wait till you see what my uncle sends me. Always comes in the mail, it does, but it hasn't come yet. Besides, I got a new sled."

"And I've got a punching bag."

"But you ought to see my 'lectric motor," retorted John, still undaunted. "You just wait till you see the toys I make for it to run."

Sid had saved his last and most cherished possession until the last. "My mother, she gave me a real gun, a Winchester. It'll shoot across the lake, it shoots so far. I'm going hunting with it on the ranch, next summer."

"That's all right." John was not in the least nonplussed. "But the cops won't let you shoot it in the city, and you've got to wait until spring comes before you can use it. I can go home and have all sorts of fun with all my things, now."

Silvey and Perry sauntered up.

"'Lo!" came the inevitable greeting.

"'Lo!" came the inevitable reply.

"What did you get for Christmas?" asked Perry.

John allied himself instantly with Sid in the effort to outboast the new arrivals.

"Sid's got a sure enough gun," he said impressively. "Bigger'n I am."

"And John's got an electric motor," chimed in Sid as John finished. "He's going to hitch it on his his new sled with a pair of oars, and go rowing over the snow when snow comes. My, but it's strong!"

"We've got a Christmas tree," spoke up Silvey.

"So've we," said John.

"So've we," Perry added.

"But mine's bigger'n any of yours," Bill insisted. "It's so big, we most had to cut a hole in the ceiling to set it up. And wide? It's so wide I can hardly get in the room with it."

"'Tain't," exclaimed John incredulously. "Nothing can be bigger'n ours."

"Come and see," was Silvey's unanswerable retort. So the quartette trooped up the street to "come and see."

On their way, they passed the postman, struggling under his load of Christmas packages. Not only was his leather sack packed to overflowing with mail, but a little cart which he dragged behind him on the walk also held its quota of letters and gifts.

"Merry Christmas!" the boys called to him. He was a genial soul, not in the least like the evil-tempered crank who had held the route the year before.

He smiled back at them, for he had just been given a seventh necktie which a family had decided was too hideous to be worn by the original recipient, and was in high spirits.

"Any mail for us?" came the chorus of inquiry.

He fingered the mail in his sack. "Here you are, young Fletcher! Catch!"

"From my aunt," announced John proudly as he looked at the postmark. "She always sends me jim-dandy things for Christmas." He ripped the protecting envelope away and stared in amazement at the two white-crocheted squares in his hand.

"Washrags, washrags!" jeered the boys. For once, Aunt Clara had followed the haphazard suggestion at the end of his letter and had sent something useful.



He jammed the offending gifts into his pocket, and sought to change the subject.

"Come on, Silvey, let's see that big tree of yours." So they stamped up the Silvey front steps and into the house.

"There," said Bill, pointing proudly at the family fir.

John gave one disgusted glance. "That? Why that's set on a little table! Wouldn't come near the ceiling if it was on the floor. Come down to my house and I'll show you a real tree."

They left the Silvey house noisily.

"Beat you down to John's," Perry shouted as they stood on the front walk. Away they went, puffing like little steam engines, in the cold air. A moment later, they stood admiringly in the Fletcher hall.

"Now, isn't our tree bigger'n yours?"

Silvey admitted that it was, thus adding the final restoring touches to John's complacency. Then they staged an impromptu Punch and Judy show and played with the other toys until Mrs. Fletcher, beaming in spite of perspiration, came into the room.

"The turkey's most done, John, so the boys had better go home now. They can come back at five to see the tree lighted, if they wish."

Would they care to? You just bet they would!

The front door slammed behind them, and John went out to the kitchen to nibble at bits of celery, sample the cranberry sauce, and in other ways annoy his busy mother until she turned on him despairingly.

"For heaven's sake, John, go into the parlor and read one of your new books until dinner's ready if you can't be quiet."

By five in the afternoon, he was so thoroughly surfeited with the season's delights, that he had barely enough energy to stand in the window and peer into the lighted area around the street lamp as he watched for his guests; for to bountiful helpings of turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, dressing, and a quarter of one of his mother's delicious plum puddings had been added cornucopia after cornucopia of candy, until his stomach, for once in his life, caused misgivings as to its food capacity.

Perry Alford came punctual to the minute, and shortly thereafter Red Brown, Sid DuPree, Silvey, and Skinny Mosher. Mrs. Fletcher had made use of her telephone to make the gathering a little more of a party for John than he had anticipated.

Another display of the presents followed, while his father and mother stood in the parlor doorway and beamed down upon the youngsters. When the excitement had died away somewhat, Silvey spoke up.

"Let's have a Punch and Judy show now, fellows."

"Come on, dad," added John. "You can do it best."

So for the second time that day, the room formed the theater for that ancient, comic tragedy. But as the devil popped up on the shaky little stage to make an end to Punch, there came a cry of protest from the audience who were squatting breathlessly on the floor.

"Oh, not yet, not yet. Please, not yet."

So Punch triumphed in his fight with the little red-faced imp, and the play went forward through a new and altogether delightful chapter of the Punch family's existence. Amid the laughter which followed its conclusion, John disappeared silently and came back into the room with a box of tapers.

"Now, daddy, light the tree."

Nothing loath, Mr. Fletcher obeyed. Candle after candle on the tinselled branches sprang into life until the fir stood in a flickering blaze of glory while the boys stood back and watched with a feeling akin to awe at the beauty of it. At a propitious moment, he reached carefully between the waving lights and brought out snap crackers and little tin horns from the branches. There was one of a kind for each excited guest.

"Wish there were girls," said Perry to Red, as they tugged at their respective ends of a snapper. "Then it's more fun. They always act 'fraid cat, and scream when it goes off." He unrolled the little cylinder of paper which had been concealed in the foil wrapping. "My hat's pink. What's yours?"

Cornucopias came next, four to a boy. They donned their hats, and munched candy after candy silently while the candles burned low. At last Mr. Fletcher clapped his hands.

"Form in line and march into the dining-room and back by the tree, five times, and blow hard as you can on your horns!"

The procession started. Passers-by on the sidewalk stopped and looked in through the lighted window to see the cause of the disturbance. A flame sputtered as it burned perilously near a resinous twig.

"Halt!" called Mr. Fletcher. "Everybody blow!"

The lower flames vanished two and three at a time. Those higher up followed more slowly. At last but one flickering beacon at the top of the tree remained to defy all the boys' efforts. John's father watched in amusement, then gathered him up in his arms.

"Now, hard!" And the last candle went out.

Mrs. Fletcher suggested "Hot potatoes," and the minutes sped joyously past until the telephone rang.

"Tell Perry to come home for supper," was the message. That youngster slipped on his overcoat sulkily.

"Wish'd there wasn't any old telephones," he snapped as he opened the door.

His departure was a signal for a lull in the festivities. Mrs. DuPree sent a servant over for Sid, and the other boys followed shortly, leaving the family to watch in the darkness beside the parlor grate. Mrs. Fletcher broke the silence.

"It's been a beautiful Christmas," she said softly. "A beautiful Christmas."

John nodded contentedly from his father's knee. Again, the only sound to be heard in the room was the soft whick-whicker of the burning coal as the flames licked the chimney breast, or the occasional rustle of falling ash. Suddenly footsteps pounded up on the porch and the bell rang loudly. John opened the door, and Silvey came panting into the hallway with skates in one eager hand.

"Come on over to the lagoon with me," he shouted breathlessly. John looked at his mother.

"How about your supper?"

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. Hadn't he eaten enough candy for a dozen suppers? "Please let me go, Mother," he concluded. "Please. It's Christmas!"

There was no resisting such a plea. He flew upstairs to resurrect his last year's skates from the attic, and was back in a moment for his mittens and stocking cap. The door slammed as the two dogtrotted it down the street. At the corner, John slackened speed.

"Are you sure there's skating, Bill?" he asked. Never, so far back as he could remember, had the ice been in condition for the sport by December.

Silvey nodded emphatically. "Saw six fellows go by the house with skates on their shoulders. So I asked 'em."

They left the park gravel path, now flanked on either side by leafless shrubbery, and struck out over the hard macadam of the road. As they reached the board walk leading to the warming house on the boat landing, John strained his eyes eagerly ahead.

"There is, oh, there is," he cried as the long tile roof by the boat house came in sight. "I can see 'em."

They spurted and pulled up at the skating house doors. A moment later they were in the crowded, brightly lighted interior. Directly beneath the apex of the roof, ran a lunch counter which divided the place into a section for men, and another for women, escorted or not, as the case might be. Long, wooden benches ran along each wall, all filled with a constantly shifting occupancy. John seized the first available seat and drew on his skates. A stamping on the hacked, wooden floor to make sure that the steel runners were locked firmly, a wobbly interval as he stepped out and sought control of his ankles, a momentary pause on the steps, and he was out on the ice, with Silvey following. They executed a few maneuvers and sat down on the boat landing.

"Ice is great," said Bill, as he tightened a skate strap. "Doesn't it feel funny, though?"

John nodded and stood up again. "Beat you around the island," he challenged.

No sooner said than they were off. Silvey's new skates cut the ice cleanly at every stroke, while his chum's duller pair skidded and slid now and then as he gained headway. Along the narrowing, west pond, past helpless beginners whose efforts not to appear ridiculous made them doubly so, past staid business men, past arm-linked couples from the university dormitories, and out on the thirty-foot path of scraped ice which encircled the island. There Silvey slowed up.

"Getting bumpy," he cautioned. "Watch out!"

The warning came too late. John's skate sank to his shoe sole in a crack and sent him sprawling. He stood up shakily and rubbed a bruised knee.

"First fall, first fall," yelled Bill as he turned back. "Hurt much?"

John shook his head and started off again bravely. They got into the swing of it as they swept under the second island bridge and out on the last lap of the course. Faster and faster their legs flew over the ice as they dodged cracks with more certainty. Skater after skater was left behind, often by a hair's-breadth margin of safety which evoked half-heard protests as they skimmed on.

"Almost there," shouted Bill as he increased his efforts to the utmost.

"Tie," yelled John as he shot over and grabbed an arch of the northern bridge to stop his momentum. "Look at the crowd. What's happened?"

They skated slowly over and around until they found a thin space in the human circle which allowed them a view of proceedings.

"Fancy skaters," whispered Bill. "Look at him write his name on the ice."

"And the medals on his sweater. Gee, don't you wish you were him?"

A voice broke in on them.

"Scatter there, scatter." The policeman forced his way to the center. "You're blocking the way to the skating house. Keep moving!"

In obedience to the majesty of the law, the boys skated off and found a secluded, smooth bit of ice nearer shore. There, John tried to cut a shaky "J" on the ice and fell over backwards. Shortly afterward, Silvey met with a similar fate, and the boys looked at each other despondently. Both pairs of ankles were aching badly from the unaccustomed exercise, but neither wanted to admit it. Silvey loosened one of his skate straps.

"Got your watch, John?"

It showed a quarter past nine. "Our mothers'll be waiting for us," he said. Thus a way to honorable retreat was found.

They stamped stiffly back to the warming house and took off their skates. John held his numbed fingers as near to the glowing coal stove in the center of the room as he dared, while Bill studied the age-stained menu over the lunch counter.

"My treat," he said, as he drew a bright half-dollar from his pocket. "What'll you have?"

John ordered his favorite, mince pie; his host, a cut of half-baked apple. They washed the food down with a glass of cider apiece, and stumbled out on the board walk toward home.

"Feel's funny, walking after you've had skates on," John commented as they trudged along the dark path. Silvey spoke up, "Say, John."

"Yes?"

"You know Sid DuPree?"

He nodded.

"Well, he's trying to cut you out with Louise. Saw her in the corner drug store with him, drinking ice cream sodas."

John's foot caught in a piece of loosened turf at the edge of the gravel walk. Otherwise, he gave no sign that he had heard.

"Aren't mad because I told you, are you?"

"No."

His paper route had kept him too busy to give the attention due her, but if Louise were inclined to succumb to the blandishments of ten-cent sodas at a drug store, he was glad to know it. Such incidents might result in disaster for the great plan if allowed to run unhindered.

"Feel's like a thaw," said Bill, trying to rouse his chum from the revery into which his announcement had plunged him.

Again John nodded. Indeed there was a curious softness in the air. Perhaps the promise of a long skating season was to prove false after all. But he must see Louise, the very moment of her return. Then Sid had better watch out.

He was at his front steps before he realized it.

"Good night," called Silvey, as he turned for home.

"Good night," replied John a trifle wearily. And with the same feeling of morose taciturnity, a strange mood on this of all nights, he undressed and crept into bed.



CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH THE PATH OF TRUE LOVE DOES NOT RUN SMOOTHLY

But the softness in the Christmas air did not presage a thaw. When Mrs. Fletcher closed the windows in her son's room the following morning, and laid her hand on his motionless shoulder, she awakened him with a greeting of, "Come, son, look out and see what's happened."

Snow! A veil of fine, driving flakes scurried groundward with each gust of wind from the lake and half hid the passenger-laden suburban trains, and the ramshackle dairy buildings across the tracks. Already the cinder-laden railroad embankment was covered with a white mantle, too new as yet to be anything but spotless, which in places had drifted across the rows of rails. Along the street, each smoke-tinged roof and window ledge had a share of the rapidly deepening coverlet which sped from the leaden clouds to mask the gray, unlovely earth.

John drew on his knickerbockers hurriedly. No time for a peep at one of his new books now. Not only was the snow a thing of beauty, but it offered certain revenue if he and Bill appeared with their shovels before competition became too keen. So he appeared in the dining-room with surprising promptness.

"Sick, John?" asked his mother with gentle sarcasm, as he sat down to breakfast.

He shook his head as he gulped down spoonful after spoonful of the steaming oatmeal. Now and then he glanced out of the window at the walks and porches of the street. They were still untouched, but there was need of haste.

"Never mind the potatoes, Mother," he said, as he hurried to the coat closet for his wraps. "I'm going shovelling."

He ran down into the basement and was out and down the street with the wooden shovel over his shoulder before Mrs. Fletcher realized that he had escaped. She hailed him back.

"How about our walk, son?" she asked, as she stood in the doorway.

He shook his head in protest. "I don't get paid for that. Bill and I'll do it when we get through."

"Not much!" There was decision in his mother's tones. "That means it won't be cleaned before noon."

"Aw-w-w, Mother!"

The door closed and put a stop to further parleying. He stood by the lamppost, undecided as to which course to pursue. Should he walk boldly off and take the consequences, or was discretion the better part of valor after all? Still, when a fellow's mother wanted something done, it was useless to try to evade the task, and he was just beginning to realize it.

He set to work. Before long the cheerful scraping of the wooden shovel against the pavement restored his good humor. His face became flushed, and he stopped a moment to pull his stocking cap back from his hot forehead, for the exercise was making his blood circulate rapidly. The long walk which led to the back door could be skipped, and the porch railings left snow-capped as they were, for his aim was to fulfill the barest letter of his orders before Mrs. Fletcher looked out of the window.

Five minutes later, he knocked the snow from his shovel, and sneaked up the street, slipping now and then as his feet struck concealed ice on the walk, and once he fell sideways into a soft drift. As he walked up the Silvey steps, a snowball hit him on the leg, and another sped past his nose. He turned to find Bill on the lawn with a snowball in one hand.

"Surrender," came the call.

John dropped his shovel to the floor and seized a handful of snow.

"Going to fight or get snow jobs with me?" he asked, as he pounded the mass into an uneven sphere.

For an answer, his chum dropped his missile and ran around to the back yard, to reappear with his own shovel. He pointed down the street. Two members of the unemployed were making the snow fly at the DuPree's with an earnestness which boded ill for their youthful competitors.

"Let's try Southern Avenue," said John. "Perhaps there won't be anyone there."

No sooner said than done. But as they rounded the corner, they found that three of the "Jeffersons" had organized an expedition of their own and were cleaning the walk and porch of the house nearest the corner. Their leader motioned to Bill.

"Go on back home, or we'll smash your faces in."

John promptly stuck out his tongue. "They can't fight," he said scornfully, "and two of 'em are 'fraid cats. Let's try the big yellow house, Bill."

With a glance back at the foe, they ran up the steps and rang the bell persistently until a becapped, flustered servant opened the door.

"Ask the missis if she wants the walk cleaned?" said Silvey, who usually handled the negotiations for work.

Scraps of conversation floated down to the boys from the upper regions whence the girl had disappeared with the message. Presently she came to the head of the stairs and called down to them, "How much you want?"

Bill made a mental inventory of the appearance of the grounds as the boys had approached the house. "Quarter," he said promptly.

"Missis, she say 'all right,'" said the maid.

The boys stamped out of the hallway and set to work with a will. Silvey began at one end of the broad veranda floor, while John made the snow fly from the railings and porch posts. Next came the steps, and the walk leading down the lawn.

"This won't take long," said John optimistically.

He stooped to fix a shoelace which had become untied. Silvey yielded to temptation and gave him a shove into the heaped snow, to have him rise angrily and dig the half-thawed slush from between his neck and collar. Then he sprang at his partner and they went sprawling again, but this time, Bill was the underdog. The two boys struggled for a while until John sat heavily on his foe's stomach, and pinioned the resistant arms with his knees. Then the fun began. "Going to be good?"

Silvey looked desperately up at the handful of snow held high above his head.



"Look, here, Fletch—don't you wash my face, don't you—"

"Going to be good?" asked John again.

His answer was a wrench for freedom. Thud, came a soft mass down on Bill's nose and open mouth. He spluttered and rolled over desperately, trying to throw John from his vantage point. The front door creaked, and an alien voice called,

"What's the matter, you boys? Ain't you ever going to get finished?"

They rose sheepishly to find the servant smiling down at them from the doorway.

"Missis says, 'hurry up,'" she cautioned them.

Silvey picked up his shovel and began to make the snow fly industriously. Presently the fit of ardor wore off, and he stared thoughtfully at the long stretch of walk which still remained between the front porch and the back yard.

"How much did I say we'd do this for?" he asked.

"Quarter," said John, as he leaned on his shovel handle.

"Wished I'd made it thirty-five cents!"

Foot by foot, they cleared a path well around by the side of the house. The milkman, the butcher, and the gas inspector had each left heavy footmarks which were difficult to remove and made progress slow. At the rear steps, a huge drift met their gaze, and Silvey stretched his aching arms.

"What'd we say we'd do this for?" he asked again.

"Quarter."

"Wished I'd said half a dollar. There's a walk on the other side, too."

No skylarking now. Their muscles ached too much from the exercise to waste their energy in other channels. When the cut through the drift had been made, and the back porch and basement walk freed of the covering, Bill leaned his shovel against a clothes-line post, and surveyed the result of their labors malevolently.

"Next time we do this, John," he snapped emphatically, "we'll charge a whole dollar!"

But the mischief had been done. By the time they had been paid the well-earned quarter, not a house near them offered prospect of employment. And at the far end of the street, the "Jeffersons" were making a last reconnoissance before deserting the neighborhood for more fruitful fields of labor.

"Now see what you did when you shoved me into the snow," said John ruefully.

"Well, you didn't have to wash my face," retorted Bill. Secretly he was not sorry that the work was at an end. "Get your new sled and we'll go hitching. Beat you over to our street."

They dashed up the nearest private walk into a residential back yard, and dropped their shovels over the back fence. John wedged one foot between a telegraph pole and a picket, and drew himself up.

"Come on, Sil."

Silvey braced himself for the spring. A rear window in the house creaked open and a woman's head appeared.

"What are you boys doing?" called the shrill voice. They dropped over into the other yard, and John started to run.

"She's in curl papers," said Bill. "She won't chase us. Let's fix her."

"I'll call the police if you go through again," she persisted as the boys filled their hands with snow. John gave a few finishing pats to his missile.

"How'd you like to have her for a mother?" he asked his chum, as he drew his arm back for the assault.

A projectile broke against the window sash and showered snow fragments upon the untidy hair. A second went a serene way through the opening and dissolved in a blot of hissing water on the kitchen stove. The frame slammed to with a violence which threatened destruction to the window glass, and John grabbed his shovel with an exultant yell.

"Now run like the dickens!"

They parted at the Silveys'. John continued on a dogtrot towards home, and a moment later was pestering Mrs. Fletcher at her work in the kitchen.

"Where's some rope, Mother?"

She looked from the pile of napkins on the ironing board. "What do you want it for, son?"

"My sled."

She walked over to a box behind the kitchen gas range and drew out a three-foot length. "Will this do?"

"No. Got to be lots longer than that."

"You're not going hitching, are you?"

He shook his head dubiously.

"Now, John! There have been little boys killed because wagons ran over them when their ropes broke and they couldn't get out of the way!"

He evaded his mother's eye and sneaked from the house. Silvey was waiting for him impatiently on the front walk.

"Where's the line?" he asked.

"Can't go," complained John. "She won't let me."

"Aw, come on. We'll go over to Southern Avenue and she won't know a thing about it. I'll get you a rope from our house."

His feeble scruples vanished. A five-minute stop at the Silveys sufficed to make the necessary alterations in John's equipment. Bill brought out his own sled, and they started for the corner. In front of the grocery store, they found Pete, the wagon boy, placing the last of the noon orders in his cart.

"Give us a hitch," they begged.

He nodded a cheery consent. "But hurry. These have got to be delivered in time for dinner."

The boys ran the ropes rapidly around the rear axle and jumped on the sleds. A shout, a sudden jerk, and they were off, swinging around the corner on Southern Avenue with a momentum which shot them far to one side. John drew a breath of relief, for it was his first experience at the sport. Bill looked up from between the sled runners and grinned.

Along they sped. The smooth steel slid easily now over the closely packed snow in the wagon ruts, now over bumps which forced involuntary grunts from between their lips. As the horse increased his pace they tightened their grasp on the sled hand-holes.

"Whoa," shouted Pete. The wagon stopped abruptly as he reached back into the body for a package, and the sleds shot under the wagon almost up to the horse's hoofs, before the boys could find a holding place in the hard snow for their toes.

John dragged his sled out, and lay back on it while he waited for Pete to reappear. The sun had pierced the heavy clouds, and dazzled the eyes of the neighborhood with glistening reflections on the white, unsullied lawns and doorsteps. On the more exposed portions of the closely packed house roofs, the melting snow formed long, dagger-like icicles which hung from the eaves, or clustered thickly around drain pipes and gutters. The heel-packed lumps which had defied the efforts of the wooden shovels to remove them from the cement walks showed dark, water-marked edges under the influence of the warming rays. Near him in the street, a flock of hungry sparrows fought boldly over a bit of vegetable which had fallen from a passing fruit vender's cart, and in the clear, dancing air was a touch of elixir which set his pulses to throbbing.

"Yes," he said, although Silvey had asked no question, "it's just peachy."

"Isn't it?" acquiesced Bill. "And your mother's afraid you'll get hurt, doing it."

The smile vanished. What if Mrs. Fletcher should find out! The joys of the sport, sweeter through their illegality, were not sufficient to prevent a sinking sensation in his stomach at the thought of such a catastrophe.

There came a scurry of footsteps on the walk close by him, another caution from Pete and his sled rope tightened again. They drove from one street to another, working ever westward until the gray-stone, red-roofed buildings of the university were behind them. When but a package of steak, bread, or a similar trifle was to be delivered, John or Bill dashed around to the back porch or through a basement flat areaway, while the driver sat and smoked in state on his seat. Thus the arrangement was of mutual benefit to the parties concerned.

At last they halted before a dingy, eight-flat apartment building. Pete carried the last, and heaviest, consignment of edibles in to its owner and returned, a moment later, to stand on the curbing with a kindly smile on his heavy-featured face.

"Now, boys," he said, as he drew his cap down over his ears and forehead until the peak nearly met his black, bushy brows, "hang on tight, and I'll give you a real ride back."

A flick at the ribs of the fat, easy-going horse, and the two sleds were flying homeward. The depressions and hoof marks in the snow flew between the runners at a speed which dizzied their owners. Bits of ice, dislodged by the horse's hoofs, flew up and struck the boys' faces stinging blows. Past the university buildings, past the school which now stood empty and deserted because of the Christmas holidays, past impatient pedestrians on the street corners, and over to Southern Avenue where Pete turned in abruptly to the alley entrance of the grocery store. Silvey screamed a warning as his sled, running straight ahead, felt the tug of the tow rope, and skidded in a wide circle over the rough, uneven snow. John tried to save himself from a similar fate, but he had delayed too long. Straight for a huge snow bank, the two sleds headed, struck the curbing, and capsized with their owners underneath.

John rose shakily with an uncertain smile on his lips. His chum dug some snow from his ears and ran forward to unhitch the sleds. The grocer's clock showed a quarter after twelve, so they started for the home street. As they parted, John held up a detaining hand.

"That quarter," he explained. "Come on back to the drug store and get it changed. I want to put my share in the pig bank."

Silvey drew off one moist mitten, and fumbled in his trouser's pockets with a perplexed frown. Neither was it in his coat, nor in his blouse. Where had it been left?

"S'pose we lost it when we took that spill?"

There was another fruitless search before the boys went back to the grocery corner. There, they raked the snow bank over and over, levelled and reheaped it, and levelled it again before their ardor cooled. At last they were convinced that the coin was hopelessly lost. John turned away moodily.

"Come on," he said. "I'll be getting scolded if I don't get home for dinner." It was hard to lose the proceeds of a morning's work in such a manner.

Mrs. Fletcher was waiting for him when he came into the hallway, stamping his feet lustily to free them from the last lingering traces of snow.

"Where's the brush, Mother?" he asked, as he shook his coat. She brought him the implement and watched him keenly.

"Didn't I forbid you to go hitching, this morning?"

"Who told you?" he asked naively, taken aback at the sudden accusation. Mothers had the most mysterious ways of discovering things.

She smiled in spite of herself. "I asked the little Mosher boy where you were and he said he'd seen you riding off behind Anderson's grocery wagon. What do you think I ought to do to such a disobedient little boy?"

He didn't know. But he wished that he might lay hands on that kid brother of Skinny's. He'd teach him a thing or two about holding his tongue.

"You're getting too big to spank," she commented as he stood silently before her. He nodded a cheerful assent to this.

"So I think you'd better stay in the house this afternoon."

"A-w-w-w, Mother!"

She went into the dining-room where the table had been set for the noonday meal for two, and heaped his plate with potatoes and gravy, while he stood looking miserably out of the window.

The sun's rays were melting the surface of the snow and turning it a dirty gray. Up the street, Perry Alford was winging snowballs at a black, leafless trunk opposite his house. That meant good packing, and snow fights, snow men, and a baker's dozen of other exciting amusements.

To be gated on such an afternoon!

"Come, son!" said Mrs. Fletcher, as he turned away with quivering lip, and drew his chair to the table. "Be a man. Mother's right about it, isn't she?"

He admitted that her sentence was but justice, and attacked the dinner with an appetite which no sorrow could diminish. Then he tramped slowly up to his room and threw himself down on his bed with a book to while away the weary stretch of afternoon confronting him.

Straightway the centuries rolled back, and the present day sorrows were forgotten. The times of the good king Alfred held sway as he followed the exploits of the hero against his Danish enemies with breathless interest. Again and again did the young earldorman's well-drilled band sally forth from its stronghold to attack larger bodies of the foe, and again and again did the boy on the bed wish that he was living in those soul-stirring times. Then came the building of the Dragon, for war must be waged on the sea as well as by land, and a call of, "Oh, John-e-e-e-e! Oh, John-e-e-e-e!"

He stood up regretfully. One of his legs was cramped from lying motionless so long, and he limped into the front room. Silvey was below on the water-streaked walk.

"Come on out!"

"Can't. She found out about my hitching this morning."

"Aw-w-w, come on. The fellows are building a snow fort in the big lot, and pretty soon, we're going to have a big fight." He reached down, scooped up a handful of the moist snow, and patted it easily into a small, hard ball. "Look, packing's fine. Go down and tease her!"

John shook his head. Mother was inexorable on such occasions, and never had there been a time on record, no matter what the weeping or wailing, when a gating had been lifted. So he would meet his punishment without further ado.

Silvey went disconsolately back towards home, and the prisoner returned to his room and stared from the window which overlooked the railroad tracks. Presently he turned away and rummaged in the bureau in the big south room until he found his mother's opera glasses. A moment or so of adjustment, and he smiled contentedly. If he could not be a participant, he would at least witness the battle.

The construction of the fort was well under way. Long, erratic paths in the snow showed where the three big balls had been rolled which formed the most exposed wall. They were almost as tall as the boys, themselves, and even now Sid and Red Brown and Perry Alford were digging their heels into the slippery footing as they moved a fourth to its proper place. Mosher, bent almost double, was rolling a new and rapidly increasing sphere over the soft snow. The walls completed, the gang devoted themselves to filling in the crevices, smoothing the surface, and to testing the weak places in the fortress. A few busy minutes were spent in making ammunition, then Sid, his longing for leadership gratified at last, led his army behind the "U" shaped protection. Bill beckoned his followers out of range, and missiles began to fly. John laid the glasses down wistfully.

Shucks! watching only made him want to join worse than ever. The book was better than that!

Dusk came at last, and liberation. As he was returning from the newspaper route, the sight of a familiar figure, in the lighted circle of a street lamp, made him cross over. It was Louise.

"'Lo."

"'Lo."

John paused. It was a difficult thing to lead up to her faithlessness tactfully. She broke the silence.

"Those dishes were dear. But, oh, John, I liked the powder puff jar the best of all!" Which was the truth, for the fact that he thought her old enough for such feminine weapons was a soul-satisfying compliment.

He murmured a perfunctory acknowledgment. "Louise, what's this I've been hearing about you and Sid drinking sodas together at the drug store?"

She stood speechless, thinking of a defense.

"It's got to quit. Do you hear?"

"Why shouldn't I have sodas with him?" his lady broke out vindictively. "You never take me anywhere."

Didn't she understand that all of his playtime was taken up with earning money for her? "But we can go skating tonight," he concluded pacifically.

"That isn't spending money on me. And Sid does, lots and lots of times."

The words hurt. He'd show her that two could play at that game, even if the funds were to be drawn from the pig bank.

"I'll tell you," he shot back recklessly. "We'll go to the theater a week from Saturday. Isn't that better than sodas?" He watched her anxiously for she was most dear to his suddenly constant heart.

She assented eagerly. Nevertheless, it was plain that she still thirsted after the drug store flesh pots. He must interview Sid in the morning, for that catch in her voice was far from reassuring.



CHAPTER XIII

HE CRUSHES AND HUMILIATES A RIVAL

Sid, with new skates glistening at his side, was bound for the park lagoon when John ran across the street and stopped him.

"Come along?" asked Sid amicably. John shook his head.

"I want to talk to you," said he. "Bill says you're trying to cut me out with Louise. It's got to stop."

"What's he know about it?" asked the culprit defiantly.

"And Louise told me you'd taken her up to the drug store."

Sid shrugged his shoulders. "Guess I've a right to. What have you got to say about it?"

"Well," said John slowly, "She's my girl—"

Sid sneered.

"And we're going to get married on the money from the paper route when I grow up and—"

"Pooh!" Sid laughed unpleasantly. "Go ahead and save your money. I don't care. I'm spending mine—on her—and you can't stop me either."

Money, money, money! All he was hearing these days was about spending, not saving it, and Sid's words, as had his lady's, riled him not a little.

"I'm going to take her out, too," he shot back. "Won't be a cheap thing like sodas, either. We're going to the theater, we are, and then she'll promise not to speak to you any more. If she won't, I'll punch your face in, first time I catch you."

"Theater!" said Sid, so impressed that the concluding threat passed unheeded.

"Going to buy the tickets, this afternoon," John boasted. "Main floor seats at the 'Home'—seventy-five cents each! Don't you wish you were going?"

Sid's skates slipped from his shoulder into the snow. He picked them up and looked at John uncertainly.

"That'll cost a lot of money, won't it?" he asked.

"Most two dollars," magnificently.

"Let's take her together, then. I'll pay half the carfare and the seats."

John thought a moment. The plan possessed certain advantages. He would be able to observe how Louise acted with Sid, for one; and if he didn't consent, that persistent rival would take her later, anyway, which would be a thousand times worse. Besides, the prospect of two hard-earned dollars being frittered away for an evening's entertainment had been far from pleasing.

"The tickets are for a week from Saturday," he said slowly. "Want me to get you one?"

Sid nodded and dug into his pocket for a handful of Christmas change. He passed over a dollar and twelve cents to John, and left for the lagoon.

Half a dozen times as the street car bounced westward over the uneven track, John decided to tell Sid that, after all, the entertainment was for but two. He would probably spoil all the fun, anyway, and then the evening would be a total failure. He was still undecided when he stepped up to the tawdry box office with its photographs of local theatrical stars.

"How many?" asked the man at the little window.

John drew out a coin from his pocket. Heads, Sid joined them; tails, he should be Louise's sole escort. Heads it was. The fates had willed it; let the outcome be for good or ill.

When he told of the arrangement at the family supper table, that evening, his parents choked.

"I suppose," said Mr. Fletcher, his voice still shaking with laughter, "that you'll sit, one on each side of the lady, and glare because she took the last piece of candy from the other fellow's box."

Candy? Why, of course. The heroine of each of the novels he had read, was always receiving toothsome dainties and showers of roses from her many admirers. But he couldn't afford both methods of expressing his devotion, and candy alone would have to do. This taking your best girl to a show promised to be far more expensive than he had thought.

Need it be said that his shoes were veritable ebony mirrors, that eventful evening? Or that his ears were clean, even to the very recesses under the lobes? And when such a thing occurs, you may be sure that Solomon in all his glory was arrayed no more immaculately than that small boy.

He presented himself promptly at the door of the Martin flat at half-past seven. Louise was in her room while Mrs. Martin added the finishing touches to the party dress which she was wearing in honor of the occasion, so he shoved the two-pound box of dipped caramels, ordered in spite of paternal objections, into his overcoat pocket and sat down in the big parlor rocker to wait.

Shortly thereafter, Sid appeared with a tissue-wrapped bouquet of roses in his hand. "For Louise," he told Mrs. Martin.

John glared at him stolidly, and regretted his choice of candy. It would have taken a little of that confident smile away, if his rival had found himself antedated by a gift of a similar nature.

A quarter of an hour later found them bouncing along over the same car line which John had used on the ticket quest. The conveyance was poorly heated, but the children were too excited to notice the cold. Louise was wearing two of the roses on her frock, and Sid was in high spirits accordingly.

"Ever been out West, Louise?" he asked with a side glance at John. The lady shook her head.

"I was, all last vacation—real ranch, real cowboys. Used to take pony rides every day."

John sketched a caricature on the frosty window pane and sulked in silence. Why didn't his folks make enough money to take him on such summer jaunts? Then he wouldn't have to sit like a dummy and listen to his rival out-talk him with the one girl he cared anything about.

"And walk?" continued Sid, secure in his romancing, now that he knew that neither of his auditors had been beyond the Mississippi. "Why, the air's so fine that you can walk ever so far without feeling tired. Breakfast at the ranch was at seven, and once, I walked twenty miles just to get up an appetite for it."

"That's nothing," John snapped moodily. "I walked thirty miles before breakfast, once, too. It was right here in the city."

"What?" gasped Sid, scarcely believing his ears.

"Yes," assented John cheerfully. "It was in the afternoon before, but that didn't make any difference. It was before breakfast, wastn't it?"

Louise giggled. Sid kicked against the wicker seat cushion in front of him and was silent. John rubbed a clear spot on the frost-etched car window and peered into the outer darkness.

"Next block's ours," he grinned, still elated at the success of his thrust. "Come on, Louise."

They scrambled wildly for the door. Sid was the first in the street and helped the lady down from the high car-step, while John drew the tickets from his coat pocket and led the way to the brilliantly lighted theater lobby. Louise's eyes glistened with excitement as the trio stopped to look at the posters beside the doorway.

"Martha, the Milliner's Girl," Sid read slowly from the huge letters at the top of the bulletin board.

"Peach of a show," John commented, as they walked past the line of people waiting their turn at the box office. "Six folks killed, and shooting and everything. I asked the man when I bought the seats."

A uniformed usher led them impressively to their places and presented them with programs. John stooped over his fiancee and helped her off with her coat as he leered at Sid. That gentleman leaned easily back in the upholstered theater chair.

"Nice seats," he remarked with a touch of condescension. "A little near the stage [the words had been Mrs. DuPree's, once upon a time], but they'll do."

"I like 'em," John snapped angrily. Louise acquiesced. Sid scowled and fell back upon the wild and woolly West as a means of maintaining the conversational upper hand.

"Once I went hunting, last summer"—he began. John glanced at his watch. Ten minutes before the performance would begin; ten long, dragging minutes of Sid's talk about a place of which he knew nothing. Why had he brought his voluble rival along?—"hunting for bear," continued the narrator. "Lots of fun, Louise. One of the cowboys took me with him 'way up a mountain. We went into a big, dark forest with palms—"

"Palms don't grow out West," John interrupted savagely.

"Yes, they do."

"Geogerfy says they don't."

"This was a part the geogerfies don't know anything about," serenely. "Ever been out there?"

"No," reluctantly.

"Then keep quiet. I have. Well, there were the palms and—"

Was there to be no respite from the steady flow? John suddenly remembered the candy, and reached for his overcoat.

"Oh," exclaimed Louise, as the white, pink-stringed box was brought forth. Sid stopped, obviously disconcerted. John unwrapped the dainties and threw the paper on the floor.

"Have some?" he asked as he lifted the cover.

The lady's lips closed over a chocolate-covered caramel. Sid's did likewise. John helped himself to a third and leaned back happily. At last a way of silencing his adversary had been found.



Conversation was temporarily impossible, so the trio gazed eagerly around them. Just ahead, sat a shop girl in a shabby best dress, with a head of blonde, mismatched hair, and beside her, her escort, an Irish mechanic, who shifted his head from time to time as the unaccustomed collar scraped his neck. Across the aisle was a family of towheaded Swedes, the father self-conscious in his carefully pressed black suit; the mother, watchful of her two mischievous, blue-eyed urchins. Young gallants of the neighborhood filled the boxes at either side of the auditorium, taking this, the most expensive, means of proving their devotion to their lady loves. In the rear of the theater were the first and second balconies, occupied by voluble men and women of all ages and nationalities. Ahead, hung the stage curtain, decorated with staring advertisements, "Lamson, the neighborhood undertaker," "Trade at the corner grocery. Vegetables always at the lowest market prices," "Snider's drug store, prescriptions, choice candies, and camera supplies," and the like. From somewhere in the heights came a sharp "rap-rap-rap," which echoed even to the more forward rows on the main floor.

"Gallery," explained John. "Fellow knocks on the back of one of the benches to make the boys behave." His jaws resumed the burden of reducing that persistent caramel to a swallowable state.

The orchestra of five filed solemnly in through the little door beneath the stage and took their accustomed places. A dart, propelled by an urchin of the upper regions who evidently had no fear of the monitor's stick, sailed serenely downward and found a resting place in a blonde lock of the salesgirl's hair. The footlights flashed on, and the musicians struck up a lilting, popular air, as Sid cleared his throat.

"Then the cowboy—" he began.

"Have another?" interrupted John, extending the box of tenacious goodies.

"Sh-h," whispered Louise. "There goes the curtain."

Why Martha had selected the hapless vocation of milliner's apprentice, John could not understand. For it was in Madame's little millinery shop in New York that Mordaunt Merrilac, gentleman by appearance, and leader of a desperate band of counterfeiters, met and became infatuated with the heroine. This he revealed in a soliloquy punctuated by frequent tugging at his black mustache, and strode majestically to the rear of the long, gloomy basement in which the first act was laid. There he joined three overalled mechanics in shirtsleeves, who puttered gingerly about a table on which were mysterious vats and a brightly glowing electric crucible.

"Is all in readiness?" growled Mordaunt.

"Aye, master."

"Into the acid vat with the plate, then." He drew out a jewelled watch and studied the dial with knitted brows. "Ten long minutes before we know of our success."

A muffled scream, long-drawn and filled with terror, broke in upon the silence which followed. Louise, Sid, and John leaned anxiously forward on the very edges of their seats.

"What's that?" gasped the tallest of the workmen.

"'Tis nothing," sneered the villain. "Come, Ralph, draw out the die."

The group gathered anxiously around the bit of metal. Mordaunt scrutinized it carefully, and strode swiftly over to an opposite corner of the stage where an ancient letterpress stood. Running an inked roller over the surface of the etching, he placed it on the bed of the press, revolved the wheel rapidly in one direction, reversed, and drew forth a slip of white paper.

"The face of a twenty-dollar bill to perfection," he exclaimed as he examined the dark oblong at one end. "Men, you may go."

Thus was the intricate process of counterfeiting depicted, and the audience, as audiences did in Shakespeare's time when a sign represented a forest or a tree or a mountain, allowed its imagination to make the thing seem plausible.

Mordaunt raised his voice. "Dolores!" he called, once, twice, thrice.

A tall, lithe creature in dark, clinging robes, with the black hair of all villains and villainesses, responded.

"Yes, brother?" she whined from the head of the basement stairway.

"Bring me Martha."

The ogre had commanded, therefore the maiden was flung down the steps before him—slight, dainty, with a wealth of blonde hair, and a pitiful sob in her voice which drew a lump into John's throat, willy-nilly.

"Let me go, oh, please let me go!" she wailed. Louise's lower lip trembled sympathetically. Such a tender slip of a heroine to be at the mercy of such an unscrupulous monster!

"Still stubborn, Martha?" Mordaunt snarled.

The girl drew herself up proudly. Only her heaving bosom told of the physical struggle which had forced her into the basement den. John could not help marvelling at her recuperative powers.

"Still," she murmured with flashing eye.

"Think it over well," the black mustachioed one persisted. "Am I so odious? Marriage with me means riches, girl, riches. And I would be kind to you."

She shook her head vehemently. "Never, never, never would I marry a man who lives as you. Though you beat me, though you torture me [Louise's eyes welled in spite of herself], never can you force me into such wedlock."

Hasty footsteps sounded at the head of the stairway. Ralph, the etcher, dashed down into the room.

"The police!" he shrieked. "They are about to raid us!"

Merrilac muttered a curse. "Take her away," he growled to his sister of the clinging robes. "Take her to your home by the secret passage." He pressed a button and a panel in the wall swung back. "Ralph and I must remain to destroy the die! Quick, on your life, be quick!"

Would the police come in time? Nay, John and Sid and Louise, not yet. That would have ended the play in the first act. Dolores dragged the heroine away with her. Mordaunt swung the panel back into place and ran over to the table where the counterfeiting apparatus lay.

"Look you to your automatics!" he shouted. "And up with the trapdoor, Ralph. The acid vats must be hidden."

But the police were upon them as he spoke. Revolvers cracked. Jack Harkness, blonde, curly haired, and of magnificent physique, let his firearm drop as he clapped his hand to a suddenly nerveless right arm.

"I'm wounded," he bellowed, "but after them! Let not that arch villain escape!"

A bluecoat sprang forward, halted, and fell flat on his face. Ralph, a heroic sacrifice in spite of his guilt, intercepted a bullet meant for Mordaunt. Then the master counterfeiter, realizing that his cause was hopeless, raised a hand as a token of surrender, and advanced slowly to receive the waiting handcuffs. As the policeman raised his hands to slip them on, he dashed suddenly past to the stairway, and slammed the door behind him. A key squeaked in its little-used lock, and the representatives of the law stared at each other for one dazed, dragging moment.

Suddenly Harkness flung his muscular form against the door again and again until it broke from its hinges. As his subordinates dashed up the stairway in futile pursuit, he dallied in the bullet-marked room that he might walk to the center of the stage and wave his unwounded arm melodramatically.

"I will rescue her," he vowed solemnly. "I will rescue my little Martha though the chase leads to the burning, sand-strewn deserts of Africa!"

There was tumultuous applause and the curtain. Louise leaned back in her seat with shining eyes. John drew a deep breath.

"Isn't it just peachy?"

Sid DuPree nodded. "Makes me think of the way the cowboys used to shoot off their revolvers on the ranch."

"Have another candy," suggested John promptly. Again was the flow of reminiscences successfully checked.

But the author of "Martha, the Milliner's Girl," was too considerate of the welfare of his hero to lead him on an expensive trip to Africa; for that worthy, as are all such stage beings, was poor and otherwise honest. So the second act revealed a richly furnished room in Dolores' apartment, not many miles away from the scene of act one. Martha threw herself on the luxuriously upholstered lounge in a paroxysm of sobs. Dolores entered, still clothed in dark, clinging robes. Entered also Mordaunt Merrilac, as beetling of brow as ever. Perfervid conversation ensued between the trio in which little Martha tearfully ordered the villain to release her.

"My detention here will avail you naught, Mordaunt Merrilac," she quavered. "In spite of all you can do, some day, my hero, Jack Harkness, will find this den and rescue me!" Prolonged handclapping came from the more genteel portion of the audience, mingled with cheers and cat-calls from the gallery.

The villain laughed sardonically. "Still you hope for rescue by him?"

"I do."

"Then wait." He pressed a convenient button. Through the heavily curtained doorway, closely guarded by the two remaining members of the gang, walked Jack Harkness.

"Gee!" gasped John, consternation-struck by this new development. It was evident that the same stupidity which had allowed Merrilac to make his escape in the first act, had led this singularly wooden-headed hero into that villain's trap.

"So, my proud beauty," hissed Mordaunt, "you expect this man to save you? 'Tis futile. At twelve, tonight, we shall plunge him into the Hudson River, and you, Martha, shall see him die!"

Whereupon Martha gave a piercing shriek, swooned, and the curtain fell.

"Crickets!" sighed John, as a prodigious bumping behind the lowered curtain told of scenery that was being shifted, "I wish they'd hurry up." Louise nodded silently, while the box of carmels lay neglected on her lap; and for once during the evening, Sid could find no parallel for such thrilling events in the scenes of his last vacation trip.

Almost before they realized it, the curtain rose again and revealed the hut on the Hudson. In one corner of the dismal interior stood Jack Harkness, bound, but appropriately defiant. In the other, on the floor lay the weak, sobbing little heap that was Martha. In the center stalked a triumphant Mordaunt with his two confederates.

"Jack Harkness," he hissed, "your time has come. Men, throw back the trapdoor." Ah, those ever-present trapdoors!

He walked over to the opening. "The Hudson runs muddy tonight," he murmured, as a shudder ran through the audience, "and very cold. 'Tis well. Drag forth the prisoner and loose his bonds."

He stooped to jerk Martha to her feet. The rude door at the rear sprang open, and the police burst in upon the scene. The two counterfeiters sought for an escape, and Jack, sudden strength returning to his immobile limbs, sprang upon the startled Mordaunt. A terrific struggle ensued, and a tender scene between the two lovers as the police dragged their three captives from the stage.

"At last, little Martha," Harkness murmured as he looked down at her.

"At last," she murmured, gazing shyly into his face. Then came a long, passionate kiss—and the curtain.

Sid sprang to his feet and helped Louise on with her coat, but John, stumbling after them up the aisle and out on the crowded street, neither noticed nor cared. The play triangle of two men and a maid seemed strangely analogous to his own love affairs. Sid was Mordaunt Merrilac, Louise was little Martha, and he was the heroic Jack Harkness. Neither counterfeiters nor police would participate, but that did not diminish the tenseness of the situation, nevertheless. He was roused from his revery by Sid's voice as they came to the street car corner.

"Here's a drug store, Louise. Let's go in and have a soda."

Dreaming again, and Sid had stolen another march on him! He trailed sulkily in and the trio sat down in the little wire-backed chairs before a round, shiny table. The drug clerk came forward ceremoniously and stood beside them.

"My treat," said Sid grandly. "What'll you have, Louise?"

She wasn't certain. A feeling of dull resentment took possession of John. If Sid was going to act this way, he'd make it as costly an affair as possible.

"Chop-suey sundae," he announced, after a hasty glance at the printed menu.

"What?" stammered Sid. Such a delicacy cost a whole quarter, the most expensive treat that the soda fountain purveyed.

"Yes," said John calmly. "Better take one, too, Louise," he added maliciously. "They taste just peachy."

She accepted his suggestion gratefully.

"Give me a glass of water," ordered Sid weakly. It is an awful thing to possess soda liabilities of fifty cents when you have but three dimes and two nickels in your pocket.

John sensed his rival's predicament and smiled. Slowly, with manifest enjoyment in every mouthful, he devoured the tempting, frozen treat. Then he leaned back in his chair contentedly and waited for Louise to finish. The white-coated soda clerk approached the table for payment, and the terror which crept into Sid's face was strangely like that on Mordaunt's when the police had broken into the river hut. He drew out his inadequate supply of small change and looked at it blankly.

"Come, boys," prompted the man of syrups and sodawater, "I can't wait all day."

"I haven't enough money," whispered Sid at last.

John turned, a hint of the stage hero's mannerisms in his dramatic gesture. "What? Invite us for a treat and then can't pay for it? You're a fine one, Sid." He drew a half-dollar from his own pocket and flung it down on the table. "Never mind him," he turned to Louise. "I'll pay your car fare home!"

And with the crushed and humiliated Sid following them miserably, he led the way from the drug store to the waiting car.



CHAPTER XIV

HE BUYS VALENTINES

Sid made one more effort to cope with Miss Martin's suddenly aggressive fiance. John came upon the couple one late, crisp January afternoon, as he was leaving for the paper route. Louise did her best to appear nonchalant as he picked his way carefully across the slippery, wagon-rutted road, and Sid, after a longing glance toward the iron fence which surrounded the home lot, decided to brazen matters out.

"'Nother chop-suey sundae?" John sneered as he eyed his rival scornfully.

"'Tain't fair, always talking about that," blurted Sid. "How'd I know the money I'd need when I left home?"

John deemed the excuse unworthy of notice, and turned to Louise.

"What's he want this time?"

"Go skating with him," she replied after a moment's hesitation.

"Then ask you to have a treat in the warming house, and let you pay for it 'cause he didn't bring enough money. I'll teach you to skate—tonight if your mother'll let you. Silvey said the ice was fine yesterday, and everything'll be peachy. Want to come?"

What maiden wouldn't? John glanced at his watch. The paper wagon was due in five minutes.

"I've got to run," he said hastily. "See you tonight!" He left on the dogtrot for the corner.

His school books eyed him reproachfully as he hunted for his skate straps after supper. An arithmetic test impended, and he had a composition to write. Nevertheless, he disregarded both tasks serenely and called for his lady. With her skates swinging with his over one shoulder, they started for the park.

"Ever been skating before?" he asked casually as he took hold of her arm that she might pass a slippery bit of walk in safety.

Louise shook her head. "Once a mud puddle froze in front of the house where I used to live, and I got a broom and tried. That's all."

Then, for an instant, John regretted the invitation. To teach an absolute novice, no matter what the age, to skate with a passable degree of security is no light task. But his hesitation vanished, ten minutes later, when he fastened her skates on and helped her through the doorway of the warming house. It is no unpleasant thing for a small boy's best girl to cling to his arm as did his when they walked, oh so cautiously, down the skate-chopped steps from the boat landing.

As they stepped out on the slippery ice, Louise made a last, despairing grab for the step rail.

"You go on and skate, Johnny," she pleaded. "I'll just stay here for a while."



Nothing loath, he sped off in and out among the swiftly moving, ever changing throng of people. In a moment he shot back to a less crowded space near her, where he "shot the duck," balanced himself first on one foot and then on the other, and finally came to an abrupt halt, leaving a trail of ice shavings in his wake.

"My!" said Louise as he stood beside her, panting a little. "I wish I could do those things."

He beamed. "They're easy. Hang on to my arm and I'll show you. Now, step out with me. One-two, one-two, one-two."

Her ankles bent over until they touched the ice, and her breath came in quick, nervous gasps. Nevertheless, she followed bravely over a scant ten feet of the rink.

"Isn't that easy?"

She nodded with an assurance which she was far from feeling. "My skate strap hurts. The right one. Loosen it, John."

He knelt to make the necessary alteration. As he stood up, one of his lady's feet started off on an unauthorized expedition, and she grabbed him by the arm with a fervency which nearly proved disastrous.

"Don't start again just yet," she begged. "I'm tired."

As they stood there, a pounding, scurrying figure in black, Red Brown, sped past at top speed. Silvey followed closely, noted the situation, and slowed up.

"Leave her in the skating house and come on," he called. "Red's got it and we're having heaps of fun."

Skinny Mosher and Perry Alford came, both in pursuit of the fleet-footed Brown. Sid DuPree, puffing audibly, stopped just out of reach, glad of any pretext to halt long enough to catch his breath.

"Let's see her skate," he sneered, knowing that Louise dared not release her escort for pursuit. "You're a fine teacher, you are. Don't you wish you were with us?"

John's eyes followed him longingly as he skated off. The temptation of Silvey's invitation was great, and with any other maiden, would have proved fatal. But the lure of the rosy dream for the future was still strong. He freed himself gently from her grasp, and was two yards away before she realized what he had done.

"There," he said with satisfaction. "I knew you could stand up. Now, skate to me."

"Aw-w-w, Johnny, come on back. I'm going to fall!"

"No you're not," said John decisively. "Try and you'll see."

Louise essayed one ineffectual stroke and stood helpless. "I t-think you're just horrid," she whimpered.

He grew a trifle impatient. "You'll never learn that way." Why were girls always so afraid to try things, anyway?

She made another halting attempt, reached forward to catch him, and felt herself slipping, then straightened up, leaned too far backwards, and her feet shot suddenly out from under her. Pupil and teacher crashed to the ice. John was the first to recover himself, although the unexpected fall had been a severe one. He stooped over his lady in spite of strangely shaky knees, and found her sobbing, partly from nervous shock and partly from mortification.

"Hurt, Louise?" She sat up angrily and dug her mittened hands into her eyes. He caught a murmur of "Horrid old thing!" and she began to sob. The boy knelt and removed her skates gently.

"Come," he suggested wisely. "We'll go into the warming house and have something to eat. Then you'll feel better. Catch hold of my hand. One, two, three! Up you come."

They sat down on one of the gray, wooden benches which lined the big room. Louise studied the dingy sign on the post by the counter.

"Aren't mad, are you?" he asked anxiously. "I didn't do it on purpose."

The easy tears had dried and she shook her head cheerfully.

"Give me some apple pie," she began. Thus peace was concluded.

When she had drained the last drop of cider from the glass and dropped the pasteboard pie plate on the floor, John kicked it under the seat with his heel and leaned over to her.

"Take some more," he urged. "I'm not Sid DuPree."

Since the disastrous one in late December, there had been two exceedingly prosperous snowfalls to supplement the newspaper revenue, and he had plundered the pig bank for funds for the evening with a clear conscience.

Again Louise eyed the placard. Coffee was for grown-ups, and strictly forbidden at home; therefore she would sample a cup of it. "And a red-hot sandwich and some more apple pie, Johnny."

When she had finished, they started for home. Their feet were still unaccustomed to the difference between walking and skating and they stumbled now and then along the path. As they came to the road, John looked down at her anxiously.

"Have a good time?"

"It was peachy."

"Aren't you glad you didn't go with Sid?"

She nodded.

"Have enough to eat?"

She assented heavily. Strange how the taste of that forbidden coffee lingered in her mouth.

In the morning as Miss Brown called the roll, John gave a quick glance backward along the aisle. His lady was absent. The strangely assorted meal had been too much for her.

But attacks of indigestion rarely last more than a day, and this one proved no hindrance to the series of tri-weekly skating parties, minus refreshments, in which the pair participated. After two weeks of laborious lessons, Louise found that she was able to take a few sure strokes without gulping and calling for masculine aid. The first trip around the rough ice about the island followed, sure test of a beginner's prowess, and, behold! the youthful mentor found the lessons no longer irksome.

As they sauntered home, skates clashing merrily at every step over the arc-lit snow of the park driveway, one starlit February night, Louise broke into a sudden delighted giggle.

"Day after tomorrow's Lincoln's birthday. Aren't you glad?"

Glad? Was ever a schoolboy sorry for an added day of freedom?

"Two days after that's St. Valentine's day. We'll have a box up at school then. What kind of valentines do you like best?" he quizzed in return. "Paper hearts and things with lots of lace on them, or celluloid ones in boxes?"

Louise hesitated for a moment.

"I like," she said finally, "any kind of valentines, but best I like lots and lots of them—more'n anyone else in the room gets. Last year I was third, and in second grade a girl got one more valentine than I did. It was only a comic, but that gave her nine, and I had eight. This year I want to be first!"

It was no small honor which the girl craved. To lead in the valentine distribution is to be acknowledged the belle of the room until the June examinations break up the little, pupil cliques and send their members to the different higher-grade rooms. John resolved that her wish should be fulfilled, but that achievement lay at the end of a path beset with pitfalls. Let rumor make the rounds that he purposed stuffing the box, and others would play at the same game. Witness a girl in an early grade, the homeliest of the room, who begged a dollar from her father and filled the box to overflowing with a hundred penny valentines addressed to herself.

He left for his paper route half an hour earlier, that Lincoln's birthday afternoon, and turned abruptly westward as he reached the corner where the wagon drove up with his nightly bundle. He halted a moment in front of the school store. In the window was the usual display of rubber balls, penny trinkets, and magazines, and beyond them, he could see the deserted interior. As he had foreseen, the holiday had brought the usual lack of juvenile trade, and investment in the valentine market could be made without fear.

He swung the door back. The trip bell rang noisily, and tall, angular Miss Thomas came out from the suite of little rooms in the rear.

"Valentines," said he briefly. She reached a shallow box containing a dozen or so of the little printed love missives to the glassy-topped counter, where he pawed them over with one half-washed hand.

"I want more than these!"

The look of boredom, bred by long months of finicky penny purchasers, vanished. She stooped for one of the packets of fresh stock on the lower shelf. As he broke it open, she readjusted her heavy-rimmed spectacles, and watched his actions with amusement.

Hearts of cardboard with crudely pierced edges of blue forget-me-nots, little square folders bearing pictures of doves, a cottage, an old mill, or a bit of idealistic scenery—he sorted them all. Each appropriate sentiment on the inner leaf, "To one I love," "To my true love," and the like, was read and approved before he shoved the packet away from him.

"Let's see your two-penny ones."

Gorgeously laced, these, with cut-outs in the center to reveal butterflies, arrow-pierced hearts, or Dresden Shepherdesses. He selected three of the gaudy creations.

"The nickel ones—in boxes."

Thus did he aspire to brilliantly-colored celluloid for the crowning jewel of the St. Valentine's sacrifice. He handed the assortment to Miss Thomas with a sheepish grin.

"Envelopes for them, too. How much?"

She counted them with gaunt, practiced fingers.

"Sixteen penny ones, three two-centers, and one at five. Do you want one or two-cent envelopes?"

He gazed at the assortment of paper containers. Monstrosities of hearts, cupids, and entwining fretwork were embossed on each, but save for the intricacy of design, there was little difference between them. He indicated his choice.

"Forty-three cents," said Miss Thomas.

John paid the sum without a tremor and dashed for the door. The selection had taken longer than he had planned and he was afraid he would miss the paper wagon.

That evening was passed in addressing the envelopes at his father's library desk. Five of them were scrawled in a heavy backhand, with the aid of his mother's broad, stub pen, and five more in his normal handwriting. He finished the others in a variety of huge pothooks with blackly crossed "T's" and dotted "I's," and viewed the result of his labors with great satisfaction. Louise would never guess that they had come from the same donor.

Their despatch to the valentine box was the next thing to trouble him. If he deposited so large a number of love tokens in one, or even two installments, it would certainly attract attention. He took Silvey into his confidence.

"Why don't you want Louise to know where they came from?" asked his chum thoughtfully.

"'Cause getting the most valentines in the room won't be half the fun if she knows I sent 'em all."

"Give 'em to me," said Silvey. "I'll put half in, myself, and Red can take the rest."

Promptly at two-thirty, that Fourteenth of February, Miss Brown brought the recitations to a close and laid her little, black record book in the desk drawer, then drew the big, slotted cardboard box toward her and smiled down at the expectant pupils.

"I'll ask you to keep as quiet as possible," she requested. "Otherwise, we may disturb some of the grown-up, eighth-grade classes who are too old for these things."

No need of any such caution. The children were quiet as the proverbial mice as they waited for the first name to be called.

"John Fletcher."

He stumbled to his feet in amazement. Had Louise sent him a valentine? As he opened the envelope, a gaudy caricature of a gentleman with reddened nose, paste-diamond pin, and flowered vest met his eyes. Underneath was a bit of doggerel elaborating certain traits ascribed to "The Rounder." He twisted suddenly in his seat and surprised a smile of exultation on Sid's face.

Just wait until school was over. He'd fix him for that.

"Olga," called Miss Brown with a smile, some moments later.

Flaxen-haired Olga simpered up to receive her missive. The excited buzz of conversation which arose claimed John's attention.

"That makes eight for her."

"But Louise has nine!"

Names of several girls who were popular only in the eyes of their youthful swains followed. The teacher shuffled the remaining valentines hastily.

"Four more for Olga, and three for Louise."

John turned anxiously and encountered a look of placid satisfaction on Olaf's stolid face; that same Olaf who had offered to sell his symptom list for a fifth of the market price.

"Louise Martin, two more."

"Six for Olga!"

John leaned tensely forward. He had sent but an even twenty of the gaudy trinkets, and this sudden influx of rival valentines threatened dangerously to pass that number. More envelopes were passed out. From behind him, he caught the excited whisperings of two girls.

"Louise has twenty!"

"And Olga, twenty-one!"

Miss Brown stooped to turn a broad box right side up on her desk.

"The last valentine," she concluded. "Here you are, Louise."

Had Sid sent that? He'd smash his face in if he had. The unexpected addition had saved the day for his sweetheart, but that kid had no business butting in, anyway! Miss Brown watched the buzzing groups of pupils.

"There's just fifteen minutes left before dismissal," she said considerately. "You may spend it in looking at each other's valentines if you wish."

The pupils crowded back to his lady's seat, while he stood on a chair near the wall and craned his neck to see the vision of celluloid and pink and blue ribbon which had come in that last box. She examined the wrappings again, but no identifying mark could be found. As John stepped down, Sid DuPree tried to edge past him, and found his way blocked immediately. Louise looked up at her youthful fiance.

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny," she smiled delightedly.

"I sent—" began Sid from behind his shoulder. Then was John filled with sudden wrath. He would squelch this persistent rival once and for all.

"You sent it?" he sneered.

"I did," DuPree replied. Louise watched the two eagerly.

"Why that cost all of a quarter. And kids who asks folks to have sundaes and then can't pay for them, don't spend that much for valentines. Cheapskates never do!"

Sid scowled. Before he could make suitable reply, Miss Brown rapped for order and he had to go back to his seat. There, as he squirmed in his seat while waiting for the dismissal bell, he caught John looking at him and stuck out his tongue as a manifestation of his scorn. But that gentleman only grinned. Wrongfully or no, he knew that the credit for the twenty-five cent valentine had been given to him, and he was content to let matters rest as they were.

Valentine's day past, Washington's birthday was the one festive oasis left for the children in the desert of school days. Though the cold weather held marvelously well, little by little the thermometer beside the drug store's door showed rising-temperature levels as John stopped to look at it on the way to school. The long, northern shadows which the houses and apartments cast against the soot-grayed snow were shortening rapidly, and his paper route, so long patrolled in entire or semi-darkness, was now completed just as dusk set in.

Then Miss Brown reached back in her desk drawer for a certain packet of narrow manila envelopes, that last February afternoon, and brought to a certain small boy who occupied the seat just in front of her desk, sudden realization that March was upon the class.

"Please have them signed and returned by Monday," she told the pupils as she distributed them.

John drew the white, finger-marked card from the ragged envelope, and his face went first white and then scarlet as his eye followed the long column of marks. Accusing memories of lessons half done or postponed with a hope that teacher wouldn't call on him, of a skating party with Louise when a geography map should have been outlined, and of arithmetic papers hurriedly done in the half-hour "B" class recitation period, to be returned with a heavily penciled "20" or "30" across their surfaces, arose to annoy him. His teacher spoke again.

"There are one or two boys and girls in the 'A' class who will have to do better next month," John fancied that she was looking squarely at him, "or they'll be sent down into the 'B' division."

That wasn't the worst of the matter. He had to take that testimonial of disgrace home to be signed, and duly commented upon, by his mother.

The card reposed safely in his pocket over Saturday, while he pondered now and then upon the least painful method of breaking the news to her. Sunday passed. On Monday morning, as he stood up from the breakfast table, he broke out,

"Mother!"

"Yes, son?"

His courage vanished, and he was unable to go any further.

"What is it?" she asked.

"N-nothing. It was a peachy breakfast." He kissed her nervously and went into the hall for his coat.

"I forgot to bring it," he told Miss Brown that morning school session. At noon, he had the same excuse.

"Well, if it isn't here tomorrow morning, I'll send you home after it," that sophisticated supervisor of juveniles replied. And with this uncomfortable fact ever in his mind, he set out on the afternoon journey with the newspapers.

The weather seemed to have shaped itself for his mood. A curious, raw dampness had crept into the still air, and overhead was a level, sullen expanse of gray vapor. Locomotive smoke showed that the light breeze had shifted suddenly to the south, and there was an indefinable attitude of expectancy about, as if the big city with its varied expanse of buildings and vacant lots and snow-filled parks was waiting for something. As he stamped up the front porch steps and kicked the snow from his shoe soles, a fine, almost invisible drizzle began.

Blame that report card, anyway. Perhaps if he presented it with the "hundred" spelling paper that very day, his mother wouldn't be too severe with him. He'd try that experiment in the morning, anyway.

But upon waking, he stared from his window in delight at the spectacle which the capricious weather had formed for him. The rain had increased as the night passed, and had frozen upon the chilled trees and house roofs. The linden on the Fletcher lawn was coated with fairy lace work, and the denuded lilac bush across the way shone black through its glassy covering. The long expanse of dark, cement walk which flanked each side of the snowy road was coated with ice and made walking for pedestrians a matter of some danger. As he jerked his tie into position, Perry Alford shot past on his skates, and he hurried down to breakfast. He'd have a little of that sport before school, himself.

But as he rose joyously from the table, he stopped short. There was that report card; and he knew that his plans were shattered. Mrs. Fletcher's remarks upon his many deficiencies would consume every minute of the time before school.

"My report," he said briefly. She looked at it.

"John!"

He gazed out of the window in a forlorn effort to appear unconcerned.

"Reading, 'F'," quoted Mrs. Fletcher, "and last month it was 'G'."

He drew out his watch and set the big hand forward ten minutes. If he used a little strategy, he could at least shorten the lecture by that amount of time.

"Arithmetic, 'P'," she went on. "And geography, 'P'. And you told me you had all your lessons done when I gave you permission to go skating those evenings. I'm very much displeased with you."

He grew desperate. When Mrs. Fletcher began to talk about being displeased and grieved, there was trouble ahead. He drew a much-chewed pencil from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

"Hurry and sign, Mother," he begged. "It's school time."

She scribbled a reluctant signature at the bottom and looked at it thoughtfully. "I'll keep this to show to your father this evening."

"I've had it three days already," he blurted. "It's got to go back today."

He snatched the card from her hand, showed his watch as she protested, and fled for his coat. Once at the corner, he stopped running and smiled. The escape had been fairly easy and with a minimum of fuss, and he was immeasurably light-hearted, now that the report card bugaboo was off his mind.

At Southern Avenue, he caught up with Sid, Silvey, and Perry Alford. Bits of ice dropped from the trees to the walk as they sauntered along, and water dripped from the icicles on the eaves of the apartments and stores as the morning rise in temperature began to take effect.

"Feel's as if it's going to thaw," said Silvey as they came to a very slippery stretch of walk. So the quartette slid up and down on the ice as long after the second assembly bell as they dared, and with the fear of tardiness upon them, dashed for the school yard.

His pocket was empty, and his conscience clear, and the morning session passed swiftly for John. At noon, as the long lines filed into the school yard to freedom, he looked about him with delight.

The winter's deposit of snow was melting into little rivulets which trickled merrily along wagon ruts until they came to the street drains. First-graders stopped to splash soggy snowballs into a huge puddle which had collected in the street just beyond the alley, and the drip-drip-drip of the water, from the trees and buildings to the wet, glistening sidewalks was as music to his ears. He broke into a run toward home from pure exuberance of feelings, and halted now and then to fill his lungs with the sunlit, pregnant air which the south wind had brought.

The thought of the continuation of the "penny lecture" which was waiting failed to dampen his spirits, even though it threatened curtailment of his evenings with Louise. For if the skating parties were over, spring with its marbles, tops, and kindred delights had arrived and all sorrow fled before it.



CHAPTER XV

THE SPRING BRINGS BASEBALL

Little by little the snow disappeared. During the first days of the thaw, lethargic city employees chopped paths through the melting ice to the street drains. Bare edges of the cement walks appeared in places, and at night the puddles and pools in the street hollows bore a thin, frozen covering. As the month passed, the crystals became more and more rare, and green areas of grass appeared on the more exposed portions of the neighborhood lawns. The children turned from their sport of sailing sticks and improvised boats down the trickling, artificial brooklets to take part in games of "Run, sheep, run" and "Hide-and-seek" over the rapidly softening turf. A pelting, refreshing rain from the south drove away the last soot-stained vestiges of the snow lying in the protecting shadows between the houses, and presto, Miss Thomas' little store displayed a window stock of agates, catseyes, and common clay marbles to tempt pennies from boyish pockets.

Then, after school, during recess, and for long minutes before the afternoon session, the alley which flanked the school yard was marked with rings of varying dimensions. The air resounded with cries of, "No hudgins," "H'ist," "Your shot," or "You dribbled," as the players contested for prizes of five- and six-for-a-cent clay marbles. Occasionally two of the big eighth-grade boys would draw a six-foot circle in the earth and play for "K'nicks, dime ones," and the game would bring a crowd, three deep, from the neighboring players to applaud or gasp at each shot.

Even John, man of business that he was, could not resist the temptation. The last traces of that autumnal scorn toward "such foolishness" vanished as he became the owner of two shooters and a pocketful of the more common marbles.

The clan spirit among the different boyish cliques at school revived again. Skinny Mosher, who had hugged the warm house during the coldest days of the winter, caught suddenly up with John and Silvey as they frolicked home for dinner, and brought the news that a "Jefferson Tough" had threatened to punch his face in, with no provocation whatsoever. The long-discussed secret code took a new lease on life, and cipher messages passed to the various corners of room ten with a frequency which drove Miss Brown nearly to distraction.

That early April afternoon saw the reunion of the "Tigers" in the Silvey back yard. They viewed the dilapidated, weather-beaten club house with reawakened interest. Quoth John,

"It's awful dirty where the snow worked in through the fence. Let's fix her up." Down into the basement went Bill at the words, and reappeared with an old broom, a hammer, and some nails.

"A lot of the boards are loose," he said, as the boys grabbed the implements.

Sid stood around and offered voluble suggestions, but the others fell to work with a will. At the end of a half-hour the dirt floor was brushed free of debris with a thoroughness never attained on maternal cleaning assignments, and the little desk was dragged from its winter shelter of the house to occupy the customary position of state.

Red Brown stretched out on the springy, alluring sod near the building. John and Sid, Skinny and Silvey, followed his example.

"Isn't this great?" the red-haired one asked blissfully. Sid reverted to the cause for the summons of the clan.

"How about the 'Jeffersons'?" he asked.

Babel reigned instantly. Silvey was for picking them off, one by one. Red counseled a sudden descent in force upon the home haunts of the enemy. A rear window in the Silvey house creaked upward, and a feminine voice pierced the sun-filled air.

"Land's sakes, Bill Silvey, get off that wet ground this minute. You'll catch your death of cold lying there this early in April."

The boy sprang to his feet, while his friends grinned sympathetically.

"And you, John Fletcher," Mrs. Silvey went on, "you needn't laugh. Your mother won't like it a bit better, if I telephone her. She'll call you home in a minute!"

They all rose at this. Truly, modern electrical inventions widen the maternal scope of authority.

"Shucks!" said Skinny, as he brushed some dead grass from his coat. "Now she's spoiled it all. What'll we do?"