heodora. "Tell me."

"Nothing but the usual 'circus,' when Halse goes out anywhere," replied
Addison wearily, yet still laughing a little.

"But tell me what it was," Theodora urged.

With a certain reluctance which boys always feel, to divulge
circumstances that pertain mainly to boys and boys' affairs, we related
to her the salient events of the afternoon, for it would have been a bad
return for her kindness to us to have refused altogether, and we felt,
too, that her motive was something more than mere curiosity.

Theodora was a fun-loving girl by nature; she laughed over the
snap-cracker episodes, and laughed, indeed, at the Elm House roof
exploit, and even could not help laughing at Alfred and Halse's final
trick with Enoch's clothes.

"But that _was_ mean," she kept saying. "What do you suppose he will do?
Will he have them arrested?"

"No, I guess not," replied Addison. "I think it will pass as a joke.
Enoch will probably get his clothes back, in a day or two, if not his
boots."

"But he declared he would give Alf and Halse an awful licking the first
time he meets them out anywheres," I said.

"Well, I shouldn't much blame him, I do say, if he did," observed
Theodora, laughing again.

"I would if I were he," said Addison. "You see, they begun on Enoch in
the first place."

Just then we heard a little creaking noise in the chamber stairway.

"Sh," whispered Theodora. "I believe Halse is there, on the stairs,
listening."

"Well, listeners rarely hear much good of themselves," said Addison,
loudly enough for him to hear it. We heard still another little creaking
noise, this time higher up the stairs, as if he were tiptoeing back to
his room.

"I am sorry if he overheard us," Theodora remarked in a low tone, as we
got up to go to our rooms.

"I don't care," said Addison. "What could he expect any one to say of a
mean thing like that?"

When I entered our room, Halse was in bed, and pretended to snore.

"Oh, that's too thin, Halse," said I. "We heard you on the stairs."

"You are a couple of tell-tales!" he exclaimed, hotly. "To come home and
chatter out everything that happened, to the girls!"

There was some little force in the reproach, and I did not at once reply
to it. "Tell-tale, tell-tale!" he kept calling out, tauntingly, as I
was undressing.

"You just wait till Enoch gets hold of you!" I remarked, beginning to
grow irritated.

"I'm not afraid of any of your Enochs!" cried Halse.