watch?"

"It is mine," said Frank, "and I am not selling it; I want to pawn it."

"If Bill Sherman can afford to own a watch like that, why then should he
pawn it? Looks like he ought to have plenty of money."

"I do mostly," said Frank, red and fidgeting. "But I am short just at
present, and that is my own watch that my grandfather willed to me so I
thought I would pawn it for awhile."

"I don't know," said the man. "I got boys of my own. But if I don't take
it you will go somewhere else. So what's the difference? What do you
expect to get for it?"

"Grandfather paid nearly a thousand dollars for it!" said Frank. "Would
you think six hundred dollars about right?"

Then for a moment Frank thought the pawnshop man was going to have a
fit, a fit of large and dreadful proportions, right on the premises. His
eyes bulged; he choked and gurgled. It was really awful, and Frank could
not help wishing himself home again, watch and all. Even with the
coveted sum so close within reach, he was sick of the whole thing.

Presently the pawnshop man came to himself a little.

He leaned across the counter and said softly, "Would you please say that
again?"

"Six hundred dollars," repeated Frank.

"Say," said the man, leaning confidentially toward the boy, "what a
joker you are! That's good enough for vaudeville, I'll say! Well, we've
laughed enough at that, ain't we? And I feel so funny about it that I
will give you a good price for the watch. What do you guess it is?" He
leaned closer. "Twenty-five dollars."

"_Twenty-five dollars!_" gasped Frank. "Why, my grandfather paid 'most a
thousand dollars for it!"

"Sure, I don't doubt it; and so did George Washington have a watch
bigger than this that cost a lot of money but I would not give more than
twenty-five dollars for either one of 'em."

"I can't take that," said Frank, looking so shocked and disappointed
that the man knew that he would end by accepting.

"Twenty-five is as high as I can go," said the man. "We got to pertect
ourselves."

CHAPTER VII

With a bitter feeling of disappointment and shame, Frank took the
proffered twenty-five dollars, after a long wrangle had convinced him
that there was positively no more to be wrung from the pawnshop man. He
left the shop with dragging feet, half inclined to go back and throw
down the money with a demand for his watch. But the thought of Jardin
deterred him. As he went out he could see the man leaning into the