pproval of the performance from his seat
in a linden's top.

"I can ride without touching the handles, too," he boasted, as he guided
the wheel back to her. "Isn't it peachy?"

She nodded. The long, curving bars bore a suggestion of possible rides
on this beautiful steel-and-rubber creation, if their quarrel could be
healed, and she held out a tentative olive branch.

"Want to play jacks?"

John shook his head. "Going over to the park baseball diamond with the
'Tigers.' We're going to play the 'Jeffersons,' this afternoon."

"But your paper route?"

He laughed joyously. "Sold it to the newspaper man. He gave me three
dollars and twenty-five cents for the customers."

"Oh!" There was a pause.

"Like my baseball suit?" he asked.

She gazed at the flaming horror and nodded enthusiastically.

"You ought to see me run that team!"

"You?" she exclaimed. "Why, I thought Sid was captain."

"He _was_," with zestful emphasis on the verb. "But I bought nine
baseball dollar uniforms and a lot of gloves and two bats, and a real
league ball out of my money, so the kids fired Sid and elected me. He
isn't even on the team any more."

"O-o-oh!" Truly John was becoming an important figure in the juvenile
world.

"And I've got a dollar and thirteen cents left for candy and peanuts,"
he concluded.

Louise studied the confident, freckled face before her, the sparkling
bicycle with its glossy saddle and acetylene lamp, the heavily padded
baseball glove on the nickeled handle bars, and then their owner again.
She took the last remnant of her pride and stamped it under foot in a
wave of regret.

"John," she said, shyly.

"Yes?"

"I won't have anything more to do with Sid."

The captain of the "Tigers" only laughed. "You can go with Sid all you
want, and drink all the sodas he'll pay for. I don't care, because--" he
leaned his weight forward on the pedals and started for the park so
suddenly that she barely caught his parting words, "I'm through with
girls. I'm going to be a bachelor!"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SON OF THE CITY***

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