anny with a smile, "Joe has promised to doctor me for
nothing."

Mrs. Underhill lost her point. Jim wanted a good laugh, but he thought
it would hardly be prudent.

Of course something ought to have happened to impress their wrong-doing
on the children. But it didn't. They were all well and bright the next
morning. Mr. Theodore Whitney took occasion to say that he hoped the
Underhills wouldn't feel offended. It was just a young people's caper,
and he thought it rather amusing.

Mrs. Whitney said in the bosom of her household: "Well, I wonder that
Mrs. Underhill has an ounce of fat on her bones if she's worried that
way about her eight children! I always felt to trust mine to
Providence."

Jim "gave away" the thing at school, and was quite a hero. But some of
the boys had crawled under a circus tent. And a circus was simply
immense!

Lily Ludlow said, out of her bitterest envy, "I shouldn't have thought
you would let a girl take you out, Jim Underhill!"

"She didn't take me! I bought my own ticket. And there was her
cousin----"

"Well--if you like _that_ style of people--and red hair--and Dele
Whitney has no more figure than a post! I wouldn't be such a fat chunk
for anything! And her clothes are just wild."

"Of course you're ever so much the prettiest. And I wish _we_ could go
to the Museum together, just us two." Jim thought it would be fine to
take out _one_ girl.

That mollified Lily a little.

"And I just wish you lived up by our house. It seems so easy then to
come in. And when you once get real well acquainted--intimate
like--well, you know I like you better than any girl in school;" though
Jim wondered a little if it was absolutely true.

"Do you, really?" The eyes and the smile always conquered him. She made
good use of both.

"Oh, you know I do."

Chris didn't see why she couldn't get acquainted with Margaret. She
wanted her mother to call, but Mrs. Ludlow said, "I've more friends now
than I can attend to." And Miss Margaret seemed to hold up her head so
high. Then Mr. Stephen was going to marry in the Beekman family. And
Chris wondered why Mr. John didn't go in some store business instead of
learning a carpenter's trade.

Hester Brown was out of school a week. Mrs. Craven had begged the girls
not to tease her, but after a few days she announced that a mistake had
been made in the calculation--some people thought three years--but the
end was sure. However three years seems a lifetime to chi