t we, old sport?"

"Good for you!" Mr. Jerry gave him a comradely slap on the shoulder.

Bob Strahan nodded significantly to Miss Carter. "Didn't I say I'd get
a story out of this?" he whispered.

"What are you going to do now, Jimmie?" asked Mary Rose. "You aren't
going back to Mifflin?"

No, Jimmie wasn't going back to Mifflin. He thought, rather vaguely,
he'd stay in Waloo and see the world. There must be something there
for a boy to do if he were strong and willing.

"Oh, there is! Isn't there?" Mary Rose looked appealingly from Mr.
Jerry to Bob Strahan.

"Sure, there is," Mr. Jerry told her heartily. He asked for further
particulars. Just what would Jimmie like to do? Had he any plans?

Jimmie hadn't any plans just at present beyond food and shelter but in
ten years or so he hoped to be an electrician. Of course, that
couldn't be until he was a man. In the meantime he'd take anything and
if he could get a job that would let him go to school he'd be about the
happiest kid in the world.

"You can get that kind of job," Bob Strahan told him easily. "I'll
write a little story about your trip and your arrest for the _Gazette_
and I'll bet you'll have a lot of jobs offered you."

"And until you do you can stay here. There's a little room up there,"
Mr. Jerry nodded toward his attic, "that would just about fit a boy of
your size. Do you know anything about autos? Have you ever met a lawn
mower? I guess I can find work for you until you get a regular job."

Every freckle on Jimmie's freckled face glowed gratefully. Mary Rose
jumped up and down.

"Mr. Jerry!" she began in a choked voice. She ran to him and hid her
face against his hand. "First you took my cat," she gasped chokingly,
"and then you took my dog and now my friend from Mifflin. I--I don't
believe a friendlier man ever lived!"

"Mary Rose!" It was Aunt Kate's voice from the back door of the
Washington. "Bring your friend in to supper." Aunt Kate knew that,
under the circumstances, she had no business to ask a boy into the
house but she felt desperately that now it did not matter what she did
and it would please Mary Rose.

"Well, Mary Rose," Bob Strahan pulled her hair as they trooped back to
the Washington, leaving Solomon jumping frantically at Mr. Jerry's
snapping fingers, "are you happy now?"

Mary Rose's face clouded. "Half of me's happy and half of me isn't,"
she confessed in a low voice. "It makes me mad not to be