The foolish little puppy crouched down directly in the path of the lumbering motor-truck. The children could feel the ground quivering as the weight of the heavy wheels jarred at every turn.
Brother forgot that he had promised to be careful about automobiles. He forgot that, bad as it would be for a motor-driver to run over a puppy dog, it would be twenty times worse for him to run down a little boy. He forgot everything except the fact that his dog was in danger!
"Look out!" shrieked Nellie Yarrow. "Roddy, come back!"
A huge red touring car, filled with laughing girls, whizzed past him, and after that a light delivery car that had to swerve sharply to avoid striking him. As Brother reached the dog he thought the motor-truck was going to roll right over him, and he closed his eyes and made a grab for Brownie. When he opened them, the truck was standing still, two wheels in the ditch, and three men were climbing down and starting toward him.
"Are you hurt, Roddy?" cried Sister, skipping into the road, followed by Nellie. "My, I thought that truck was going to run over you sure!"
"Come out of the road, you kids!" ordered one of the men roughly, pushing the three children not unkindly over in the direction of the ditch. "This is no place to stand and talk—hasn't your mother ever told you to keep out of the streets?"
The driver of the truck, who was a young man with blue eyes and a quick smile, patted Brownie on the head gently.
"I saw the dog," he explained to Brother. "I wouldn't have run over him, anyway. Next time, no matter what happens, don't you run into the road. Cars going the other way might have struck you, and I didn't know which way you were going to jump after you got the dog. No driver wants to run over a dog if he can help it, and you children only make matters worse by dashing in among traffic."
"I didn't mean to," said Brother sorrowfully. "Only I didn't want Brownie to get hurt. I hardly ever dash among traffic, do I, Sister?"
"No, he doesn't," declared Sister loyally, while Nellie stood silently by. "Mother always makes us promise to be careful 'bout dashing."
The three men laughed.
"Well, as long as you don't make it a practice, we won't count this time," said the man who had told them not to stand talking in the road. "Now scoot back to the sidewalk—or, here, George, you take them over. That's a nice dog you have."
George, it proved, was the driver, and he took Sister by one hand and Brother by the other. Nellie held Sister's other hand and Brother carried Brownie, and in this order they made their way safely back to the pavement on the other side of the street.
"Good-bye, and don't forget about keeping out of the street," said the truck-driver cheerfully, when he had them neatly lined up on the curb.
They watched him run back to his machine—as Brother observed, he didn't look to see whether any motor-cars were likely to run him down, but then, of course, he was grown up and used to them—saw him mount to the high seat, and waved good-bye to all three men. Then they walked on, for the sand-toys were still to be bought.
Brother and Sister were the most careful of shoppers, and with Nellie to help them by suggestions, they managed to find a set of tin sand-dishes, a windmill that pumped sand, a little iron dumpcart that would be very useful to carry loads, and a string of tin buckets that went up and down on a chain and filled with sand and emptied again as long as anyone would turn the handle.
"Come over after lunch and we'll play," said Sister as Nellie left them at her own hedge.
Nellie did come over and the three children had a wonderful time with the new toys and the clean white sand, while Brownie slept comfortably under the tree. Before Nellie was ready to go home, however, a thunder storm came up and her mother called her to come in. Mother Morrison came out and helped Brother and Sister to carry their box into the barn, where the sand would not get wet.
"You don't want to play with the sandbox all the time, dearies," she said, leading the way back to the house. "If you play too steadily with anything, presently you will find that you are growing tired of it. Now play on the porch, or find something nice to do in the house, and tomorrow Jimmie will put the box under the tree again for you."
It was very warm and sticky, and Sister tumbled into the comfortable porch swing, meaning to stay there just a few minutes. She fell asleep and slept all through the storm, waking up a little cross, as one is apt to do on a hot summer afternoon. The rain had stopped and Brother had gone over to see Grandmother Hastings.
"Hello, Sister," Louise greeted her when she raised a flushed, warm face and touseled hair from the canvas cushions. "You've had a fine nap. Want me to go upstairs with you and help you find a clean dress?"
"No," said Sister a bit crossly.
"You'll feel much better, honey, when your face is washed and you have on a thinner frock," urged Louise, putting down her knitting. "Come upstairs like a good girl, and I'll tell you what I saw Miss Putnam doing as I came past her house this afternoon."
Sister toiled upstairs after Louise, feeling much abused. She had not intended to take a nap, and now here she had slept away good playtime and was certainly warmer and more uncomfortable than she had been before she went to sleep.
But after Louise had bathed her face and hands in cool water and had brushed her hair and buttoned her into a pretty white dress with blue spots, Sister was her own sunny self. She had not been thoroughly awake, you see, and that was the reason she felt a little cross.
"What was Miss Putnam doing?" she asked curiously, watching Louise fold up the frock she had taken off.
"She was out in her yard nailing something on the fence," said Louise. "I saw her when I was a block away, hammering as though her life depended on it. A crowd of boys were watching her—at a safe distance—and when I came near enough I saw she had a roll of wire in the yard. She was nailing barbwire along the fence pickets!"
"How mean!" scolded Sister. "No one wants to climb over her old fence, or swing on her gate."
"Well, I think it is a shame the way the boys torment her," declared Louise severely. "Jimmie says he caught a little red-headed boy the other day throwing old tin cans over her fence. You know what Daddy would say if he ever thought you or Brother did anything like that."
"We don't," Sister assured her earnestly. "We never bother Miss Putnam."
Fourth of July, always a glorious holiday in the Morrison household, came and was celebrated by a family picnic which gave Brother and Sister something to talk about for days afterward. Their sandbox, too, kept them busy and for a long time Jimmie never had to warn them not to touch the gymnasium apparatus in the barn.
Daddy Morrison and Dick and Ralph continued to go every day to the city and Jimmie worked faithfully at his books, determined to begin the fall school term without a condition. As captain of the football team it was necessary for him to make a good showing in his lessons as well as in athletics.
Louise and Grace perhaps enjoyed the vacation time more than any other members of the family. They would be sophomores when they returned to high school in September, and while they were willing to study hard then, they meant to have all the fun they could before they were bound down to books and lessons again.
"Where you going?" Sister asked one night, finding Louise prinking before the hall mirror and Grace counting change from her mesh bag.
"Out," answered Louise serenely, pulling her pretty hair more over her ears.
"I know—to the movies!" guessed Brother. "Can't we go? Oh, please, Louise—you said you'd take us sometime!"
"Oh, yes, Louise, can't we go?" teased Sister. "I never went to the movies at night," she added pleadingly.
"You can't go," said Louise reasonably enough. "We didn't go when we were little like you. Don't hang on me, please, Sister; it's too hot."
"I think you're mean!" stormed Brother. "Mother, can't we go to the movies?"
Mother Morrison, who had been upstairs to get her fan, was going with Louise and Grace. She shook her head to Brother's question.
"My dearies, of course you can't go at night," she said firmly. "I want you to be good children and go to bed when the clock strikes eight. Ralph promised to come up and see you. Kiss Mother good-night, Sister, and be a good girl."
Left alone, Brother and Sister sat down on the front stairs. Molly was out and Daddy Morrison and Dick had gone to a lodge meeting. Jimmie was studying up in his room and Ralph was out in the barn putting some things away.
"There's that old clock!" said Brother crossly as the Grandfather's clock on the stair landing boomed the hour.
Eight slow, deep strokes—eight o'clock.
Sister settled herself more firmly against the banister railings.
"I'm not going to bed," she announced flatly. "If everybody can go to the movies 'cept me, I don't think it's fair, so there!"
Just how she expected to even things up by refusing to go to bed Sister did not explain. Perhaps she didn't know. Anyway, Brother said he wasn't going to bed either. Ralph came in at half-past eight to find them both playing checkers on the living-room floor.
"Thought you went to bed at eight o'clock," said Ralph, surprised. "Mother say you might stay up tonight?"
"No, she didn't," admitted Brother, "but she went to the movies with Louise and Grace. Everybody is having fun and we're not."
Ralph didn't scold. He merely closed up the checkerboard and put it away in the book-case drawer with the box of checkers. Then he lifted Sister to his lap and put an arm around Brother.
"Poor chicks, you do feel abused; don't you?" he said comfortably. "But I'll tell you something—you wouldn't like going to the movies at night; you would go to sleep after a little while and lose half the pictures. Now suppose I take you this Saturday afternoon. How will that do?"
"Will you take us, Ralph?" cried Sister. "Down to the Majestic?"
This was the largest motion picture theatre in Ridgeway.
"I'll take you both to the Majestic next Saturday afternoon," promised Ralph, "if you will go to bed without any more fuss tonight."
Both children were delighted with the thought of an afternoon's enjoyment with Ralph and they trotted up to bed with him as pleasantly as though going to bed were a pleasure. Grownups will tell you it is, but when you are five and six this is difficult to believe.
Unfortunately Brother and Sister were doomed to another disappointment. Before Saturday afternoon came, Ralph remembered that he had promised to play tennis with a friend and he could not break the engagement, because to do so would spoil the afternoon for eight or ten people who counted on him for games.
"I'm just as sorry as I can be," Ralph told Brother and Sister earnestly. "I don't see how I could forget I promised Fred Holmes to play with him. If you want to wait another week for me, I'll give you the money for ice-cream sodas."
Grandmother Hastings and Mother Morrison had gone to the city, the girls had company, Molly was lying down with a headache—there seemed to be no one to take the children to the matinee.
"I guess we'll have to go buy sodas," agreed Brother disconsolately. "Only if I don't go to movies pretty soon, I'll—I'll—I don't know what I'll do!"
"I know," said Sister, dimpling mischievously. "I'll tell you, Roddy."
"You be good, Sister," warned Ralph, eyeing her a bit anxiously. "I couldn't take a naughty little girl to the movies, you know."
Ralph knew that Sister could put queer ideas into Brother's head, and he hoped that the fun of going downtown, and buying ice-cream soda at the drug store, might cause Sister to forget whatever she had in mind.
When he came home from his tennis game he found both children playing in the sandbox, and as they were very good the rest of that afternoon and evening and all day Sunday, Ralph decided that Sister was not going to be naughty or get Brother to help her to do anything she should not.
Monday evening Mother and Daddy Morrison went through the hedge into Dr. Yarrow's house to visit the doctor and his wife. Brother and Sister were told to run in and visit Grandmother Hastings until eight o'clock, their bedtime.
"Can we take Brownie?" begged Sister. "Grandmother says he is the nicest dog!"
So Brownie, who was now three times the size he had been when Ralph brought him home in the basket, was allowed to go calling, too.
"Grandma," said Sister, when Grandmother Hastings had answered their knock on her screen door, and had hugged and kissed them both. "Grandma, couldn't we go to the movies?"
Now Grandmother Hastings was a darling grandmother who loved to do whatever her grandchildren asked of her. It never entered her dear head that Mother Morrison might not wish Brother and Sister to go to the movies at night. She only thought how they would enjoy the pictures, and although she disliked going out at night herself, she said that she would take Brother and Sister.
"We can't go downtown to the Majestic," she said, "for that is too far for me to walk. We'll have to go over to the nice little theatre on Dollmer Avenue. If we go right away, we can be home early."
Sister lagged a little behind her grandmother and brother as they started for the theatre. She was stuffing Brownie into her roomy middy blouse. He was rather a large puppy to squeeze into such a place, but Sister managed it somehow. Grandmother Hastings supposed that the dog had been left on the porch.
The theatre was dark, for the pictures were being shown on the screen when they reached it, and Grandmother Hastings had to feel her way down the aisle, Brother and Sister clinging to her skirts. The electric fans were going, but it was warm and close, and Grandmother wished longingly for her own cool parlor. But Brother and Sister thought everything about the movie theatre beautiful.
"Do you suppose Brownie likes it?" whispered Brother, who sat next to Sister. Grandmother was on his other side.
"He feels kind of hot," admitted Sister, who could not have been very comfortable with the heavy dog inside her blouse. "But I think he likes it."
Brownie had his head stuck halfway out, and he probably wondered where he was. It was so dark that there was little danger of anyone discovering him. A dog in a motion-picture house is about as popular, you know, as Mary's lamb was in school. That is, he isn't popular at all.
Brownie might have gone to the movies and gone home again without anyone ever having been the wiser, if there had not been a film shown that night that no regular dog could look at and not bark.
"Oh, look at the big cat!" whispered Sister excitedly.
Surely enough, a large cat sat on the fence, and, as they watched, a huge collie dog, with a beautiful plumy tail, came marching around the corner.
He spied the cat and dashed for her. She began to run, on the screen, of course. The audience in the movie house began to laugh, for the dog in his first jump had upset a bucket of paint. The people in the theatre were sure they were going to see a funny picture.
But Brownie had seen the cat, too. He knew cats, and there were many in his neighborhood he meant to chase as soon as he was old enough to make them afraid of him. He scratched vigorously on Sister's blouse and whined.
"Ki-yi!" he yelped, as though saying: "Ki-yi! I'll bet I could catch that cat!"
Barking shrilly, he scrambled out from Sister's middy, shook himself free of her arms, and tore down the aisle of the theatre, intent on catching the fluffy cat.
"Ki-yi!" he continued to call joyously.
"Brownie! Here, Brownie!" called Sister frantically. "Brownie, come back here!"
The theatre was in an uproar in a minute. Ladies began to shriek that the dog was mad, and some of them stood upon the seats and cried out. The men who tried to catch Brownie only made him bark more, and the louder he barked the more the ladies shrieked. Finally they stopped the picture and turned on the lights.
"Rhodes and Elizabeth Morrison!" said someone sternly. "What are you doing here?"
There, across the aisle from Grandmother Hastings and Brother and Sister, sat Daddy and Mother Morrison with Dr. and Mrs. Yarrow. They had come to the movies, too!
"Is that dog Brownie?" asked Daddy Morrison, coming over to them.
Everyone had left his seat and the aisle was in confusion; people talking and arguing and advising one another.
Sister nodded miserably. She felt very small and unhappy.
"Rhodes, go down and get Brownie at once!" commanded Daddy Morrison.
When they were naughty, Brother and Sister were always called by their "truly" names, you see.
"I'll go get him," gulped Sister. "I brought him—Roddy didn't want me to."
Brownie came willingly enough to Sister and she gathered him up in her arms. He may have wondered, in his doggie mind, what all the fuss was about and what had become of the fluffy cat, but he was getting used to having his fun abruptly ended.
"I didn't know you brought the dog, dear," said Grandmother Hastings, breaking a grim silence as they walked home. "And did you know Mother wasn't willing to have you go at night when you asked me to take you?"
Poor little Sister had to confess that she had asked Grandmother to take them because she knew that in no other way could they get to the movies at night. Grandmother Hastings never scolded, but her grandchildren hated to know that she was disappointed in them.
No one scolded Brother and Sister very much that night. They were put to bed, and the next morning Daddy Morrison called them into his "den" before he left for the office, and told them that for a week they could not go out of their own yard.
"And I s'pose we can't go with Ralph Saturday," wailed Sister.
However, they were allowed to go with Ralph to the movies the next Saturday. Ralph himself explained to Daddy Morrison that he had promised to take them and then found he had a previous engagement. He thought, and Daddy Morrison did, too, that having to stay in the yard for a whole week was punishment enough even if one exception was permitted.
So Brother and Sister went down to the "big" theatre with Ralph the next Saturday afternoon, and then they had to stay in their yard all day Sunday and all day Monday, and after that they might again go where they pleased.
"Let's go see if Norman Crane's aunt sent him a birthday present," suggested Sister the first morning they were free to leave the yard.
Norman Crane was a little friend who lived several blocks away, and whose aunt in New York City sent him wonderful presents at Christmas time and on his birthday. He had had a party a few days before, and of course Brother and Sister could not go—all because they would go to those unlucky movies!
Brother was willing to stop at Norman's house, but when they reached there they found Norman had gone to the city with his mother for a day's shopping.
"I smell tar," declared Brother, as they came down the steps and turned into the street where Miss Putnam lived in the haunted house—only it wasn't called that any longer. "Oh, look, Betty, they're mending something."
There was a little group of children about a big pot of boiling tar and workmen were mending the roofs of three or four houses that were built exactly alike and were owned by the same man. These houses were always repaired and painted at the same time every year.
Nearest to the boiling pot—indeed, with his red head almost in the hot steam—was the little boy Brother and Sister had noticed walking on Miss Putnam's picket fence. A puddle of tar had splashed over on the ground and the red-headed boy was stirring it with a stick held between his bare toes.
"Now don't hang around here all day," said one of the workmen, kindly enough. "Run away before you get burned. Hey, there, Red! Do you want to blister your foot?"
The red-haired lad grinned mischievously.
"I'd hate to spoil my shoes," he jeered, "but you watch and I'll kick over your old pot! I can, just as easy."
The other children drew nearer, half-believing the boy would tip over the pot of boiling tar.
"Here," said another and younger workman, "if we give each of you a little on a stick will you promise to go off and leave us in peace?"
There was an eager chorus of promises, and the good-natured young roofer actually stuck a little ball of the soft tar on each stick thrust at him and watched the small army of boys and girls march up the street, smiling.
"That Mickey Gaffney thinks he's smart," said Nellie Yarrow, who had found Brother and Sister in the crowd, as the red-headed boy dashed past them, waving his stick of tar wildly and shouting like an Indian.
"Do you know him?" asked Sister. "Doesn't he ever wear shoes?"
"I guess so—I don't know. I don't like him," replied Nellie indifferently.
"I don't believe he has any shoes, not even for Sunday," Brother said to himself. "His coat was all torn and his mother sewed his pants up with another kind of cloth so that it shows. I wonder where 'bouts he lives?"
He opened his mouth to ask Nellie, when Miss Putnam swooped down to the fence as they were passing her house.
"Go way!" she called, leaving her weeding to wave a rake at them. "Go 'long with you! Don't you drop any of that messy tar on my sidewalk!"
"What lovely flowers!" whispered Sister as they obediently hurried past.
Indeed, Miss Putnam had made a beautiful garden and lawn of her small yard, and she did all the work of taking care of it herself.
Sister and Brother carried their tar home with them and left it in the sand heap. Jimmie had six boys playing in the gymnasium with him and they all stayed to lunch. Molly and Mother Morrison were used to having unexpected guests, and no matter how many there were, in some mysterious manner plenty of good things to eat appeared on the table.
"Can we come out and watch you?" asked Brother when the boys were going back to the barn.
"We're going swimming," answered Jimmie.
"Can't we go swimming?" inquired Sister hopefully.
"You can NOT!" retorted Jimmie. "Why don't you take a nap, or—something?"
"Come on out to the barn, Roddy," Sister urged Brother when Jimmie and his friends had gone whistling on their way to the river.
"Now don't you be meddling with any of those things out there," warned Molly, clearing the table. "Your brother doesn't like you to touch his exercises, you know."
Molly called all the apparatus the boys used "exercises."
"We're not going to touch 'em!" declared Sister. "We're only going to look."
Jimmie seldom snapped his padlock, for lately the children had not bothered the gymnasium in the barn. They found the door open this afternoon.
"Bet you can't jump off that!" said Sister, pointing to a home-made "horse" that Jimmie had ingeniously contrived.
(If you don't know the kind of "horse" they use in a gymnasium, ask your big brother or sister.)
"Bet I can!" challenged Brother.
They took turns jumping until they were tired, and they went about poking their little fingers and noses into whatever they could find to examine. Sister's investigations ended sadly enough, for she succeeded in pulling down a tray of butterflies that Jimmie was mounting (he had thought the gymnasium a safe place to keep them out of everyone's way), and now broken glass and crumbled butterflies were scattered all over the floor.
"Now you've done it!" cried Brother. "Jimmie will be just as mad!"
They found an old broom and swept the broken glass under one of the heavy floor pads. Then, very much subdued, they went into the house and were so quiet for the rest of the afternoon and through supper that Mother Morrison wondered if they were sick.
They were having dessert when the doorbell rang and Molly went to the door. She came back in a moment, her eyes round with wonder and looking rather frightened.
"It's Mr. Dougherty, sir," she said to Daddy Morrison. "He wants to see you."
Mr. Dougherty was Ridgeway's one and only policeman.
At the mention of the policeman's name, Sister had given a gasp. No one noticed her as Daddy Morrison pushed back his chair and went into the hall.
"I wonder what he wants?" mused Mother Morrison, helping Ralph to blackberries.
"Sister, you're spilling juice on the tablecloth," reproved Dick. "Look out, there goes another spot."
Sister was trying to eat her berries, and also plan what to say when the policeman should send for her. She was sure that he had heard about the broken case of butterflies, for Jimmie, when greatly provoked at her long ago, had threatened to tell Mr. Dougherty of her next misdeed.
"I like Mr. Dougherty," announced Brother sweetly.
No broken butterflies lay heavy on HIS conscience.
Louise and Grace finished their dessert and were excused to go upstairs. The others lingered at the table because Daddy Morrison and Mr. Dougherty had gone into the living-room and they did not wish to disturb them.
"Lelia," called Daddy Morrison presently, "will you come here for a moment?"
Leila was Mother Morrison's name, and she rose and went across the hall quickly.
There was a low murmur of talk, an exclamation from Mother Morrison, and then the voice of Mr. Dougherty in the hall.
"Then I'm to tell the Chief that you'll drop in tonight?" he was saying. "All right, sir, that'll be satisfactory, of course. I'm not overly fond of this sort of work, but when a woman makes a complaint, you know, we haven't much choice."
"I understand," Daddy Morrison's deep, pleasant voice answered. "I'll get at the truth, and tell the Chief I'll be down at the town hall before ten o'clock. Good-night, Dougherty."
"Good-night, sir," said Mr. Dougherty and the screen door slammed.
Daddy Morrison came back to the dining-room.
"Rhodes and Elizabeth, I want to speak to you," he said very gravely. "Come up to my den."
Sister's small face went very white.
"I didn't mean to, honest I didn't, Jimmie!" she cried, hurling herself on that astonished young man and clinging desperately to his coat lapels. "I didn't know they were there till they fell over."
"What ails her?" Jimmie demanded, staring at his father. "What fell over?"
"Your case of butterflies," Brother informed him sadly "We were playing out in the barn and Betty reached up to open a window and the pole knocked the box off."
"Well, I must say—" began Jimmie wrathfully. "I must say! If you two don't learn to leave my things alone—"
"Save your lecture, Jimmie," advised his father quickly. "I didn't know about the butterflies, but I want to ask the children about something else. Come upstairs, now. You, too, Mother."
Brother and Sister followed Mother and Daddy Morrison upstairs, puzzled to know what was to be said to them. If the butterflies made so little difference to anyone—except Jimmie, who was perfectly boiling, it was plain to see—what else was there to scold them about? For that it was to be a scolding neither Brother or Sister doubted—hadn't Daddy called them "Rhodes" and "Elizabeth"?
"Now," said Daddy Morrison, when they were all in the little room he called his den and he had closed the door, although it was a warm night, "what were you doing this afternoon?"
"Playing in the barn," answered Brother. "It wasn't locked, Daddy."
"And then you broke Jimmie's case of butterflies," said Daddy. "What did you do then?"
"We swept the glass under a pad," said Sister, finding her voice. "Did Jimmie tell Mr. Dougherty?"
"Jimmie didn't know, and he certainly would not tell the police," declared Daddy Morrison, smiling a little in spite of his evident anxiety. "Miss Putnam, children, has made a complaint to the police that you tracked fresh tar over her porch and sidewalk, and she wants you to clean it off. That was why Mr. Dougherty came tonight."
"We won't either clean it off!" cried Brother angrily. "Serve her right to clean it off herself; mean old thing!"
"Don't let me hear you talk like that again," said Daddy Morrison sternly. "Did either of you have anything to do with putting tar on her porch or walk?"
"No, sir," replied Brother more meekly.
"But did you PLAY with the tar?" asked Mother Morrison. "Mr. Dougherty told us there were roofers mending the Gillson houses today, and using hot tar."
"Yes, they gave us some," said Brother honestly enough. "Didn't they, Betty? All the children had some, and we went by Miss Putnam's house and she yelled at us."
"But we didn't stop," added Sister. "We went right on and came home, didn't we, Roddy?"
"Yes," nodded Brother. "And that was before lunch, Daddy."
Daddy Morrison looked troubled.
"If you say you did not throw the tar, I believe you," he said gravely. "You may get into mischief and do wrong things, but I am sure you do not tell wrong stories. I don't see how Miss Putnam can be positive enough to give your names to the police, but I am going around to see her now and hear what she has to say. Then I'll stop in at the town hall and see the chief of police."
The telephone rang just then, and he went downstairs. It was only half-past seven, but Mother Morrison insisted that it was time for them to get ready for bed.
"Your father doesn't want you to speak of the tar to any of your playmates," she said as she brushed Sister's hair. "You must be very careful and not say a word against Miss Putnam. People may make mistakes easily, and we'll try to think as kindly of her as we can. Poor old lady! She must be terribly tormented by the children to dislike them so."
"I wish," wept Sister over her sandals as she unbuckled them, "I wish I hadn't smashed Jimmie's butterflies. Now he's mad at me."
"Well, you know he has asked you not to play in the barn when he isn't there to watch you," suggested Mother Morrison mildly. "However, you can make it up with Jimmie tomorrow; he never holds a grudge."
"Weed the onions for him," advised Brother wisely if sleepily. "He hates weeding."
"Maybe I will," decided Sister. "Daddy said tonight he couldn't go swimming again until he had worked in the garden."
Daddy Morrison went to see Miss Putnam after the children had gone to bed. The old lady was very sure that Brother and Sister had thrown the tar and she was so positive in her assertions that finally he asked her how she could be so sure.
"Well, one of the neighbors told me," Miss Putnam said reluctantly. "No, I don't know your children from any of the others, but she does. All children look pretty much alike to me—noisy, scuffling young ones! No, I couldn't tell you the neighbor's name—I wouldn't want to get her into any trouble."
When Daddy Morrison went away, she showed him the tar on her porch and sidewalk.
"Somebody ought to be made to clear it off," said Miss Putnam severely.
The chief of police, at the town hall, was a little angry that a complaint had been made merely on the word of a neighbor, who might easily be mistaken about the children she had seen throwing tar. However, as Brother and Sister said they had nothing to do with it, and Miss Putnam refused to believe them, there was nothing to do but let the complaint stand.
"Keep away from Miss Putnam's house and street," commanded Daddy Morrison at the breakfast table the next morning. "Don't go past her house except when it is absolutely necessary. We're not going to have any more bickering over this matter. Your mother and I believe you and that is all that is necessary. I shall be seriously displeased if I find you are talking it over with outsiders, especially other children."
Ralph and Dick had already taken their way to the station and now Daddy Morrison hurried to get his train.
"Why doesn't he want us to talk about it?" asked Sister, puzzled. "Couldn't I tell Nellie Yarrow?"
"I wouldn't," counseled Mother Morrison. "You see, dear, you can't help feeling that Miss Putnam has been unfair and every time you tell what she has done you will make someone else think she is unfair, too. Your friends will take your part, of course, and while you think Miss Putnam is decidedly 'mean,' she is acting right, according to her own ideas. It is never best to talk much about a quarrel of any kind."
Jimmie, who had been eating his breakfast in silence, rose and looked toward his mother.
"I suppose I have to work in that old garden?" he said aggrievedly.
"You know what your father said," replied Mother Morrison.
Jimmie did not like to weed, and the Morrison garden, when it came his turn, was often sadly neglected. He and Ralph and Dick were responsible for the care of the garden two weeks at a time during the growing season.
"Well, maybe if I stick at it this morning, I can go swimming this afternoon," muttered Jimmie. "Dad didn't say the whole thing had to be weeded today, did he?"
"He wants the new heads of lettuce transplanted, and all the onions weeded," answered Mother Morrison. "You know you were asked to tend to those a week ago, Jimmie."
Jimmie flung himself out of the house in rather a bad temper. He did not like to transplant lettuce and the onions must be weeded by hand. Other vegetables could be handled with a hoe, or the garden cultivator, but the eight long rows of new onions must be carefully done down on one's hands and knees.
"Jimmie!" said a little voice at his elbow as he got the trowel and the wheelbarrow from the toolhouse. "Jimmie?"
"Well, what do you want?" demanded Jimmie shortly.
"I'll—I'll help you," offered Sister timidly.
"You can't," said Jimmie. "Last time you crammed the lettuce plants in so hard they died over night."
"But I'll bring the water for 'em, in the watering-pot, and I can weed onions—I know how to do that," insisted Sister humbly.
"I won't need the watering-pot," said Jimmie more graciously. "I'll use the hose on them all tonight. I wonder if you could weed the onions?"
"Oh, yes!" Sister assured him eagerly. "You watch me, Jimmie."
She fell on her fat little knees, and began to pull the weeds from a long row of onions.
The sun was hot and the row was very long. Before she reached the middle of it, the perspiration was running down Sister's face, and her hands were damp and grimy.
"Look here," Jimmie called to her anxiously, on his way back for more lettuce plants, "don't you want to rest? And why don't you wear a sunbonnet, or something?"
Sister stood up, straightening her aching little shoulders.
"Sunbonnets are hot," she explained carefully. "And I don't want to rest, Jimmie. I'll go get a drink of water and then I'll weed some more."
"Bring me a drink, too, will you?" Jimmie called after her.
When she brought it he forgot to say thank you because one of his friends had ridden past on his bicycle and this reminded Jimmie that he had meant to do something to his own wheel that morning. So he drank the water Sister carried out to him without a word because he was cross, and when we're cross we do not always remember to be polite.
Sister went steadily at the weeding again, and after a while Jimmie finished the lettuce, and began to weed an onion row himself.
"You can stop if you want to now," he said to Sister presently. "Don't you want to play? I can finish these."
"I'm not going to stop till they're all done," announced Sister. "Molly says the only way to get anything finished is to use plenty of per—perservance!"
Jimmie laughed and glanced at her curiously.
"I guess you mean PERSEVERANCE" he suggested, "Well, Sister, you are certainly fine help. It begins to look as though I could go swimming this afternoon after all."
Surely enough, when Mother Morrison called to them that lunch was ready, they were weeding the last onion row.
"I can finish that in fifteen minutes," declared Jimmie gaily. "You're a brick, Sister! When you want me to do something for you, just mention it, will you?"
Sister beamed. She was hot and tired and she knew her face and hands were streaked and dirty. Brother had spent the morning playing with Nellie Yarrow and Ellis Carr, and Nellie's aunt had taken them to the drug store for ice-cream soda. Yet Sister, far from being sorry for her hot, busy morning in the garden, felt very happy.
"Now you don't mind, do you?" she asked Jimmie anxiously.
"Mind what?" he said, putting the wheelbarrow away in the toolhouse.
"About the butterflies," explained Sister.
"I'd forgotten all about them," declared Jimmie, hugging her.
Brother and Sister were very fond of playing school. They carefully saved all the old pencils and scraps of paper and half-used blank books that Grace and Louise and Jimmie gave them, and many mornings they spent on the porch "going to school."
Neither had ever been to school, and of course they were excited at the prospect of starting in the fall. Brother had had kindergarten lessons at home and he was ready for the first grade, while Sister would have to make her start in the Ridgeway school kindergarten.
"I wish summer would hurry up and go," complained Brother one August day. "Then we could really go to school."
"Well, don't wish that," advised Louise. "Goodness knows you'll be tired of it soon enough! Sister, what are you dragging out here?"
"My blackboard," answered Sister, almost falling over the doorsill as she pulled her blackboard—a gift from Grandmother Hastings—out onto the porch.
"Come on, Grace, we'll go in," proposed Louise, hastily gathering up her work. "If these children are going to play school there won't be any place for us! We'll go up to my room."
"I thought maybe you would be the scholars," said Brother, disappointed. "We never have enough scholars."
Louise was halfway up the stairs.
"You can play the dolls are scholars," she called back.
Mother Morrison had gone over to Grandmother Hastings to help her make blackberry jam, and Louise and Grace had been left in charge of the house.
"Let me be the teacher," begged Sister, when her blackboard was arranged to her liking. "I know how, Roddy."
"Well, all right, you can be teacher first," agreed Brother. "But after you play, then it's my turn."
Sister picked up a book and pointed to the blackboard.
"'Rithmetic class, go to the board," she commanded.
Both she and Brother knew a good deal about what went on in classrooms, because they had listened to the older children recite.
"How much is sixty-eight times ninety-two?" asked Teacher-Sister importantly.
Brother made several marks on the blackboard with the crayon.
"Nine hundred," he answered doubtfully.
"Correct," said the teacher kindly. "Now I'll hear the class in spellin'."
"I wish we had more scholars," complained Brother. "It's no fun with just one; I have to be everything."
"There's that little boy again—maybe he'd play," suggested Sister, pointing to the red-haired, barefooted little boy who stood staring on the walk that led up to the porch.
He could not see through the screens very clearly, but he had heard the voices of the children and, stopping to listen, had drawn nearer and nearer.
"That's Mickey Gaffney," whispered Brother. "Hello, Mickey," he called more loudly. "Want to come play school with us?"
Mickey came up on the steps, and flattened his nose against the screen door.
"I dunno," he said doubtfully. "How do you play?"
Sister pushed open the door for him, and Mickey rather shyly looked about him.
"It's nice and shady in here," he said appreciatively. "You got a blackboard, ain't you?"
"You should say 'have' a blackboard and 'ain't' is dreadful," corrected Sister, blissfully unaware that "dreadful" was not a good word to use. "You can use the chalk if you'll be a scholar, Mickey."
Mickey was anxious to draw on the blackboard and he consented to play "just for a little."
As Brother had said, two scholars were ever so much better than one and they had a beautiful time playing together. Mickey, in spite of his ragged clothes, and bad grammar, knew how to play, and he suggested several new things that Sister and Brother had never done.
"I been to school," boasted Mickey.
The children were anxious to have him stay to lunch with them and Louise, who had heard his voice and who came downstairs to see him, also invited him to stay. But he was too shy, and shuffled off just as Nellie Yarrow bounded up the front steps.
"Wasn't that Mickey Gaffney?" she asked curiously. "I shouldn't think you'd want to play with him. His folks are awful poor, and, besides, his father was arrested last year."
"Mickey isn't to blame for that," retorted Grace quickly. "Don't be a snob, Nellie; Brother and Sister had a good time playing with that little red-headed boy."
"But hardly any of the children play with him," persisted Nellie, who of course went to the public school. "You see last term Mickey was in my room, and he only came till about the middle of October—maybe it was November. Anyway, soon as it got cold he stopped coming.
"The teacher thought he was playing hooky, and she told Mr. Alexander, the principal. And he found out that the reason Mickey didn't come to school was 'cause his father didn't send him."
"Why didn't his father send him?" asked Sister.
"He wouldn't work, and Mickey didn't have any shoes to wear," explained Nellie. "Mr. Alexander got somebody to give Mickey a pair of shoes, but he wouldn't pay any attention to his lessons, and I know he wasn't promoted. I suppose he'll be in the first grade again this year."
Brother and Sister thought a good deal about Mickey after Nellie had gone home. They wondered if he wanted to go to school and whether he wished the summer would hurry so the new term might open.
"He liked to play school, so I guess he likes to go, really," argued Sister. "Playing is different," said Brother wisely. "He didn't have any shoes on this morning, did he?"
"No, that's so," Sister recalled. "And his clothes were all torn and dirty; maybe he hasn't any new suit to wear the first day."
All the Morrison children had always started school in new suits or dresses, and Mother Morrison had promised Brother a new sailor suit and Sister a gingham frock when they started off in September.
"Miss Putnam would say he 'scuffled,'" giggled Sister, remembering that was what Miss Putnam thought all children did with their feet.
"I wonder who really did put the tar on her porch?" murmured Brother. "She'll always think we did it, unless someone tells her something else."