ver her shoulder and gently
brushing her lips with the end.

"Cross-your-heart?"

"Um-huh."

"Cross-your-heart, hope-t'-die if you ain't?"

"Honest he's an officer."

"Jiminy crickets! Say, Gertie, could he make me a norficer? Let's go
find him. Does he live near here?"

"Oh my, no! He's 'way off in San Francisco."

"Come on. Let's go there. You and me. Gee! I like you! You got a'
awful pertty dress."

"'Tain't polite to compliment me to my face. Mamma says----"

"Come on! Let's go! We're going!"

"Oh no. I'd like to," she faltered, "but my mamma wouldn't let me. She
don't let me play around with boys, anyway. She's in the house now.
And besides, it's 'way far off across the sea, to San Francisco; it's
beyond the salt sea where the Mormons live, and they all got seven
wives."

"Beyond the sea like Christiania? Ah, 'tain't! It's in America,
because Mr. Lamb went there last winter. 'Sides, even if it was across
the sea, couldn't we go an' be stow'ways, like the Younger Brothers
and all them? And Little Lord Fauntleroy. He went and was a lord, and
he wasn't nothing but a' orphing. My ma read me about him, only she
don't talk English very good, but we'll go stow'ways," he wound up,
triumphantly.

"Gerrrrrrtrrrrrude!" A high-pitched voice from the stoop.

Gertie glowered at a tall, meager woman with a long green-and-white
apron over a most respectable black alpaca gown. Her nose was large,
her complexion dull, but she carried herself so commandingly as to be
almost handsome and very formidable.

"Oh, dear!" Gertie stamped her foot. "Now I got to go in. I never can
have any fun. Good-by, Carl----"

He urgently interrupted her tragic farewell. "Say! Gee whillikins! I
know what we'll do. You sneak out the back door and I'll meet you, and
we'll run away and go seek-our-fortunes and we'll find your
cousin----"

"Gerrrtrrrude!" from the stoop.

"Yes, mamma, I'm just coming." To Carl: "'Sides, I'm older 'n you and
I'm 'most grown-up, and I don't believe in Santy Claus, and onc't I
taught the infant class at St. Chrysostom's Sunday-school when the
teacher wasn't there; anyway, I and Miss Bessie did, and I asked them
'most all the questions about the trumpets and pitchers. So I couldn't
run away. I'm too old."

"Gerrrtrrrude, come here this _instant_!"

"Come on. I'll be waiting," Carl demanded.

She was gone. She was being ushered into the House of Mysterious
Shutters by Mrs. Cowles. Carl prowled down th