ill to be paid for, the total would at least be four
hundred and fifty dollars. The parlor should cost even more, for chairs,
a sofa, and a reading table were to be placed in it. As for the
dining-room, he shrank from a consideration of that expense! And there
were dishes and books and silverware! Two thousand dollars was the least
he could expect his five furnished rooms to cost, and he had considered
half that amount sufficient for all expenses. Newly married folks
usually took honeymoon trips, too. He groaned. Would he ever earn enough
to marry Louise?

Thanksgiving drew nearer. At school, on the Wednesday immediately
preceding, the chosen few who were Miss Brown's personal aides, stayed
after school at noon to decorate the room for the entertainment to be
given at a quarter of two. Her desk was backed against the wall, and the
cornstalks used by the drawing class as models for their efforts, were
grouped against it to form a background for the impassioned actors. A
supply of pumpkins, gourds, and other autumnal fruits of the earth,
borrowed by the teacher from the grocer with whom her mother traded,
gave still greater festivity to the room.

There was no need of roll call. Every child was there, for they were too
much interested to absent themselves.

Miss Brown gave a brief history of the origin of the day. A little girl
whose pink dress clashed violently with her red hair and freckled
complexion, followed with a rendition of a doleful poem beginning:

Only a grain of corn, Moth_ur_,
Only a grain of corn.

Then the class sang one of the songs in the fourth-grade music book and
settled back expectantly, for the feature piece of the afternoon.

Silvey and Red Brown dragged a long, green curtain along a wire which
ran from one side of the room to the other, until the platform was
hidden from the room's eager gaze. A scurry of gray calico came from the
coat closet which served as the green room for the amateur actors. A
boy, muffled mysteriously in a long cloak, followed. Miss Brown gave a
last look to see that the stage was properly arranged, and the curtain
was pulled back against the wall again.

[Illustration: _It was Sid and Louise!_]

It was Sid and Louise! He'd thrown aside the long cloak (insisted upon
because he'd feel like a fool if the class saw him in costume while
waiting for the play to begin), and stood forth in high, paper cuffs
hiding his coat sleeves well up to his elbows, and a queer