cept the first bid. Jerry turned his head and looked
around and there was Bill Ellis, a classmate of Jerry's in the sixth.
The man beside him was his father. Jerry had seen him enough times to
recognize him.

Bill saw Jerry and grinned and Jerry put up a hand in greeting.

"Sold for three dollars to the young man in the red jacket in the back
row," said the auctioneer.

Horrified, Jerry realized that his raised arm had been interpreted as
a bid and that he had just bought a mahogany sewing table. "I don't
want it. It was a mistake," he wanted to say, but before he could get
the words out, Mr. Bean was extolling the beauties of a large oil
painting. Jerry had missed his chance to speak up.

"Be a nice present for your mother," said Mr. Bullfinch.

Jerry was sunk in despair. He thought that if you bought something at
an auction you had to keep it. What was he going to do when he and Mr.
Bullfinch went up to the desk near the door where you paid and what
you had bought was brought out to you?

"Forty-seven cents isn't any three dollars," thought Jerry dismally.
Nor did he have any more at home.

Suddenly Jerry thought of a place where there was plenty of ready
money. In Mr. Bullfinch's grandfather clock. Suppose he told the man
at the desk that he did not have enough money on him but would be
right back with some. Then he could borrow enough to pay for the
sewing table--minus forty-seven cents. Of course it was Mr. Bartlett's
money, not his, but as soon as he got back from paying for the sewing
table Jerry could go around the neighborhood and get a lawn or two to
mow and get money to pay back to Mr. Bartlett. But suppose nobody
wanted a lawn mowed? And how would he get back and forth between
Rockville and Washington? On a bus, maybe.

"I believe I've had about enough of this," said Mr. Bullfinch, and he
led the way to the desk where the paying for and delivery of goods
took place.

Jerry did a lot of thinking as he followed Mr. Bullfinch. He
remembered reading a story about a man who worked in a bank and took
money, expecting to pay it back, only he couldn't. If Jerry borrowed
some of Mr. Bartlett's money, that wouldn't be much different from
what the man in the bank did. And he had gone to jail.

"Anyway, it wouldn't be honest," thought Jerry, and knew he couldn't
get money to pay for the sewing table that way. What the man at the
desk would say to him when he had to confess he couldn't pay, Jerry
dreaded to