a tight rope. Harry
said if anyone of us looked right or left, he'd put blinders on us. That
night we camped near Nyack and early in the morning we said good-bye to the
Hudson and struck in southwest till We' came to our own little
river--that's the Bridgeboro River. At about four o'clock that afternoon we
went tramping over the River Road bridge and hit into Main Street. Right on
the corner was Bradly's grocery wagon, and oh boy, it looked good to me,
because it proved we were back home. _"Bradly's Casli Grocery,"_ Dorry
said; "those are the three sweetest words in the world.

"Wrong the first time," I said; "the three sweetest words in the world are
_Bennett's Fresh Confectionery._"

"Me for Bennett's!" Charlie Seabury shouted.

"Same here!" Dorry piped up.

"Bennett's or die!" screamed Ralph Warner.

"Lend me a dime, will you?" Tom Warner shouted at his brother.

"Lend me two dimes, somebody!" Bad Manners began howling.

Good night, it was some circus!

Harry said, "Come ahead, I'll take you all to Bennett's and treat you, and
I hope I'll never get mixed up with this crew again. I've had enough."

"Hurrah for Harry Donnelle!" everybody yelled.

Cracky, everybody was staring at us and laughing as we went down Main
Street. We should worry.

In Bennett's we all lined up and Harry told Mr. Bennett to please put
arsenic or carbolic acid or some other nice flavoring in our sodas;
something to keep us quiet.

I ordered a pineapple soda and yum, yum-m-m, didn't that first spoonful of
ice cream taste good.

CHAPTER XL

MMM--MM-M-M!

This is the last chapter and it's very short. Maybe you'll say that's one
good thing. But it's a good one just the same. It's a peach--I mean a
pineapple. It's the best chapter I ever wrote. It goes from the top of the
glass to the bottom of the glass. And that's the end of the story. So even
if the story's no good, it has a good ending. It had a good beginning, too.
Harry Donnelle said there should be a special chapter about that soda.

Of course, there were seven other sodas, too. I don't mean that I drank
seven more. But mine is the best one to end with, because I always go
right down to the bottom of the glass. The bottom is the only thing that
stops me.

So that's the way it is with this story. It has a happy ending. It bunks
right into the bottom of the glass. The plot is all cleared up. So is the
glass. There's nothing left to tell--or to drink.

Harry Donnelle s