ce," he replied,
grinning.

"And you've had that tooth put in!"

"Yep. Ye see, missing that tooth, when I bit into anything it seemed
like I was tryin' to make a sandwich look like a Swiss cheese. It
troubled my aesthetic taste. So I let the tooth carpenter build me
another."

"And your hair stays lots flatter than it did," declared Nancy.

"Yep. Sweet oil. It works all right."

"Nonsense, Scorch! You talk just as slangily as ever."

"But he writes a lot better than he did," said Jennie, suddenly. "Did
you notice in his last letter?"

"You're practising, Scorch," said Nancy.

"I'm goin' to night school, Miss Nancy," admitted the boy, with a grin.

"That's a good boy!" exclaimed Nancy.

"Well, learning is all right--even if a feller's goin' to be a
detective," declared Scorch, earnestly.

"And I expect you're learnin' a lot yourself, Miss Nancy?"

"Some," returned his friend.

"She's at the top of her class," Jennie declared, proudly. "Oh, she has
us all beaten, Scorch."

"Sure," he agreed. "I knowed how 'twould be. There ain't nobody going to
get the best of Miss Nancy."

"Unless it's that horrid Mr. Gordon," suggested Jennie, bringing the
conversation around to the subject uppermost in all their minds.

"Ha!" exclaimed Scorch, looking mysterious at once, and hitching his
chair nearer to the girls. "Were you on to what I said in my letter?"

"About the gray man? Yes!" cried Jennie.

"Did you ever see him?" asked Scorch.

"I--I don't know that I have," said Nancy, slowly.

"He ain't been snooping around that school?"

"Why, I haven't noticed anybody like that."

"A big man all in gray. He's some nobby dresser! I thought he was the
President--or Secretary of State at least--when he came into the office
and asked for Old Gordon. I takes him in at once.

"Now, they knowed each other well, those two did. Old Gordon was
startled and he tried to heave up out of his chair. But you know how
_he_ is," added Scorch, with scorn. "Takes him ten minutes to work his
way out from between the arms when he wants to get up. Don't know what
he _would_ do if there was a fire any time."

"Why, Scorch!" admonished Nancy.

"Well," said the boy, "he tries to heave up, and can't, and sings out:

"'Why, Jim!'

"'Hello, Hen,' says the man in gray.

"I hadn't shut the door--quite. Sometimes I don't," admitted the boy,
with a wink. "I hears the gray feller say:

"'I just got back from Clintondale, Hen. What did