ess from his arms, and unjointed his
pole. The last neatly dressed business man was walking briskly from the
pier. Silvey yawned listlessly.

"Breakfast time, ain't it?" he asked.

John's watch showed a quarter after eight. Slowly they reeled in the
dripping lines, freed the hooks from all traces of water-soaked bait,
and dismounted their rods. As they left the lake shore, the sun's rays
became oppressive with heat. The air had lost the cool, fresh fragrance
of early morning, and hinted of soot-producing factories and unsavory
slaughter houses. Suburban trains thundered incessantly cityward,
blending the snorts of their locomotives with the rumble of innumerable
elevated trains and the clamoring bells of the surface cars.

When they came to the tall poplars which marked the entrance to the
park, Silvey looked down and viewed the fruit of their morning's labors
with disgust.

"He's awful small," he said shamefacedly. "Throw him into the bushes."

John raised the diminutive perch into the air and regarded it glumly.
"Cat'll eat him, I guess."

"Have to sneak home the back way, then," said Silvey.

The return home by way of the railroad tracks was ever their route when
a fishing trip had been unsuccessful, for it avoided conveniently all
notice by jeering playmates.

"Don't you wish we'd landed that big fellow?" breathed John, half to
himself, as he reviewed mentally that thrilling struggle on the pier.

"Just don't you, though!" echoed Bill, regretfully.

They walked on for some minutes in silence. As they left the cement walk
for the little footpath which led across the corner vacant lot to a
break in the railroad fence, Silvey roused himself.

"What you going to say to your mother?"

John shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. What you going to say to
yours?"

So they fell to planning their excuses.

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH HE GOES TO SCHOOL

But an hour had passed since his protesting assertion that "Once doesn't
matter, Mother, and anyway, it's school time," had been followed by
flight to the many-windowed, red-brick building, and already the
surroundings of dreary blackboard, dingy-green calsomine, and
oft-revarnished yellow pine woodwork were becoming irksome. The spelling
lesson had not been so unpleasant, for he could sense the tricky "ei-s"
and "ie-s" with uncanny cleverness, but 'rithmetic--the very name
oppressed him. What use could be found in such prosy problems as "A and
B together ow