y'vant for dem?"

With conscious pride Sube glanced down at his feet and replied, "They're
not for sale. It's the only pair I got that fits me."

The second-hand man turned away with another shrug of his rounded
shoulders. "Vell, if your popper or your mommer _he_ say all right, vy,
den ve talk pizness."

Sube was very much put out. "My popper and my mommer ain't got a dern
thing to do with this prope'ty," he growled. "It's mine, I tell you!"

"Vell, goo'-bye. Mebbe I come see you some odder day," said the
second-hand man smiling pleasantly through his sparse beard as he
started down the driveway.

The boys were still looking helplessly at each other when he climbed
into his ramshackle wagon and drove away. At last Sube burst out
angrily, "He thought we stole it! What do you know about that?"

"I know we got all this stuff on our hands," muttered Gizzard, "and I
wisht it was in Halifax!"

"But he thought we _stole_ it!" Sube persisted. "As if _we'd_ steal
an'thing."

"We didn't steal it," Gizzard agreed; "but here it _is_, and what are we
goin' to do with it? That's what I wanta know."

"We'll do something with it all right," Sube declared sullenly. "That
ol' second-hand man ain't the only one who can buy things."

"Well, what'll we do with it then?" asked Gizzard.

Sube made no immediate answer. He didn't know himself. But he felt an
idea coming, and he struggled hard to reach into the infinite and grasp
it.

And in the meantime, at an afternoon bridge given by Mrs. Prentice Y.
Prentice, Sube's mother had heard for the first time of the Belgian
relief work being carried on in her name.

"Oh, it can't be possible," she said; "somebody must have made a
mistake. Of course, I am thoroughly in sympathy with the Belgians, you
know; every one is. But, really, I haven't been able to find a moment to
devote to any such work."

"You haven't!" called Mrs. Potter from an adjoining table. "Why, my
dear! Your name was distinctly mentioned at our house. Celeste came
straight from the door and said that the messengers from Mrs. Cane had
come to see what I could give to the suffering Belgians. And I sent you
the most gorgeous silk slumber-robe, one that I picked up in Paris. Do
you mean to say that you never got it?"

Mrs. Cane was quite overcome. "Why, I never heard of such a thing!" she
exclaimed. "Who could have done such an underhanded trick?"

"Some swindlers, without a doubt," Mrs. Rice put in. "Just to think