vain thing! And if
there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"

Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language,
Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing
less being sufficiently hard to suit him.

"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better.
Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And _I_ didn't hit
him for it!"

A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr.
Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair
had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and,
lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.

"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language
entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for
Billy Bumps between his long legs.

Neale, for laughter, could not help.

Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague
was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of
apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street
without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this
time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.

The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only
in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping
behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about
Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's
little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.

"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most
ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.

"There's more than one hair in the butter this time," repeated Neale
O'Neil, with laughter.

"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.

"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the
world completely?"

"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly
troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"

"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to
think?"

"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball
team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully
displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the
pennant."

"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it
cinched!"

"