e suffered dreadfully
through getting some pepper into her eyes, and it had been feared that
she might go blind.

"Oh, my eyes are quite all right again, Jack," answered the girl.
"Sometimes they feel the least bit scratchy. But I bathe them with a
solution the doctor gave me and then they feel quite natural."

"I'm mighty glad to hear that," Jack returned warmly. For of all the
girls who were friends of his sister he liked Ruth the best.

As luck would have it, there was a very good show on that afternoon, and
as a consequence a crowd had assembled to obtain tickets of admission.
Randy went ahead to get all the tickets needed, and while he did this
Martha plucked her brother by the coat sleeve and drew him a little to
one side.

"What's this you've got to tell me, Martha?" questioned the young captain
in a whisper.

"It's about a fellow at your school--a chap named Lester Bangs," replied
the girl.

"Oh, you mean the fellow we call Brassy Bangs! What about him?"

"He and one or two of his particular chums have been up to Clearwater
Hall three times. They took some of the girls out in a sleigh they hired,
and that Bangs did his level best to get Ruth to go along. And now he has
invited her to attend some kind of a party next week," was Martha's
reply, words which for some reason he could not explain even to himself
cut Jack to the heart.

CHAPTER VII

SOMETHING ABOUT A SLEIGHRIDE PARTY

"What kind of a party is it, Martha?"

"I don't know, except that it's somewhere out of town and some of the
girls and fellows are going to the place in sleighs. I wasn't asked to
go, and I got the information in a roundabout way."

"Then Ruth hasn't said anything to you about it?"

"Not a word. But I'm sure she received this Lester Bangs' invitation."

"And you think she may accept it?"

"I hope not, Jack. Because I don't like Bangs. He wears such showy
clothing and jewelry."

"That's the reason we call him Brassy--he is brassy in looks and brassy
in manner. He's just as much of a hot-air bag as Tommy Flanders," went on
the young captain, referring to an arrogant youth who the summer before
had pitched for Longley Academy and been knocked out of the box.

"Isn't it queer, he put me in mind of Flanders?" whispered Martha. "I
hope you don't have any trouble with him, Jack." And then, as some of the
others came closer, the private conversation had to come to an end.

While in the moving picture theater Jack sa