and began to do some rapid thinking. Butsey White, prone on the bed,
burying his head in the covers, by painful degrees returned, gasping,
to self-control.

"Mr. White," said Dink solemnly.

There was a slight commotion opposite and a hand fluttered
beseechingly, while Butsey's weak voice managed to say:

"Take it away--take it away."

Dink rose and cast a towel over the set of seven colors, and then
resumed his seat.

"It's all right; I've hidden it," he said.

Butsey rolled from the bed, tottered over to his own washstand and
drank deeply from the water pitcher. Then he turned on the melancholy
Stover.

"Say!"

"Go ahead! Soak it to me!"

"I thought you were old enough to go out alone."

"They lied to me," said Stover, kicking a chair.

"Say that again."

"They lied," repeated Dink, but with a more uncertain note.

"This from you!" said Butsey maliciously.

A great ethical light burst over Dink. He scratched his head and then
looked at Butsey, grinning a sheepish grin.

"Well, I guess it was coming to me--but they are wonders!" he said,
with reluctant admiration. "I'll take my medicine, but I'll get back
at them, by jiminy! You see if I don't."

"For the love of Mike, give us the story!"

"You'll keep it twenty-four hours?"

"So help me----"

"I'm a sucker, all right," said Dink ruefully. Then he stopped and
blurted out: "Say, White, I guess it was about what I needed. I guess
I'm not such a little wonder-worker, after all. I've been
fresh--rotten fresh. But, say, from now on I'm holding my ear to the
ground; and when it comes to humbly picking up a few crumbs of
knowledge you'll find me ready and willing. I'm reformed. Now, here's
the tale:"

VI

Dink, under the influence of the new emotion, made a fairly full
confession, merely overlooking the shoes that Flash did not carry over
the Princeton goal line, and suppressing that detail of the Foundation
House's supposed contribution, which had lent such a peculiar value to
the souvenir crockery set. By four o'clock Butsey White had
sufficiently recovered to remember the afternoon baseball match.

Ten minutes later Dink, lost in a lapping baseball suit lent by
Cheyenne Baxter, re-enforced with safety pins, stationed himself in
the outfield behind a catcher's mitt, for preliminary practice with
little Susie Satterly and Beekstein Hall, who was shortsighted and
wore glasses.

The result of five minutes' frantic chasing was that Din