beginning to wear off.
As Mr. Con Murphy said, he looked less like "a blushin' grane onion"
than he had immediately after the concoction the drugstore clerk had
sold him took effect.

"And 'tis hopin' 'twill be a lesson ye'll allus remimber," pursued the
old cobbler. "Niver thrust too much to whativer comes in a bottle!
Remimber 'tis not the label ye air to use. The only r'ally honest label
that kems out of a drug-sthore is thim that has the skull and crossbones
on 'em. You kin be sure of them; they're pizen an' no mistake!"

Neale had to listen to a good deal that was harder to bear than any of
Mr. Murphy's quaint philosophy. But he restrained himself and did not
fight any boy going to school.

In the first place, Neale O'Neil was going to school for just one
purpose. He wished to learn. To boys and girls who had always had the
advantages of school, this desire seemed strange enough. They could not
understand Neale.

And because of his earnestness about study, and because he refused to
tell anything about himself, they counted Neale odd. The Corner House
girls were the only real friends the boy had in Milton among the young
folk. But some older people began to count Neale as a boy of promise.

Green as his head was dyed, it was a perfectly good head when it came to
study, as he had assured Mr. Marks. The principal watched the youngster
and formed a better opinion of him than he had at first borne. Miss
Shipman found him a perfectly satisfactory scholar.

The people he worked for at odd jobs, after and before school, learned
that he was faithful and smart. Mr. Con Murphy had a good word for the
boy to everybody who came into his shop.

Yet, withal, he could not make close friends. One must give confidence
for confidence if one wishes to make warm friendships. And Neale was as
secretive as he could be.

Neale kept close to the neighborhood of the cobbler's and the old Corner
House. Agnes told Ruth that she believed Neale never turned a corner
without first peeking around it! He was always on the _qui
vive_--expecting to meet somebody of whom he was afraid. And every
morning he ran over to the Corner House early and looked at the first
column on the front page of the _Morning Post_, as it lay on the big
veranda.

The four Corner House girls all achieved some distinction in their
school grades within the first few weeks of the fall term. Ruth made
friends as she always did wherever she went. Other girls did not