d absently.

"Well, they say we ought to let her have a share in our newspaper."
Again he paused, afraid to continue lest his hypocrisy appear so
bare-faced as to invite suspicion. "Well, maybe we _ought_," he said
finally, his eyes guiltily upon his toe, which slowly scuffed the
ground. "I don't say we ought, and I don't say we oughtn't."

He expected at the least a sharp protest from his partner, who, on the
contrary, surprised him. "Well, that's the way _I_ look at it," Henry
said. "I don't say we ought and I don't say we oughtn't."

And he, likewise, stared at the toe of a shoe that scuffed the ground.
Herbert felt a little better; this particular subdivision of his
difficulties seemed to be working out with unexpected ease.

"I don't say we will and I don't say we won't," Henry added. "That's the
way I look at it. My father and mother are always talkin' to me: how I
got to be polite and everything, and I guess maybe it's time I began to
pay some 'tention to what they say. You don't have your father and
mother for always, you know, Herbert."

Herbert's mood at once chimed with this unprecedented filial
melancholy. "No, you don't, Henry. That's what I often think about,
myself. No, sir, a fellow doesn't have his father and mother to advise
him our whole life, and you ought to do a good deal what they say while
they're still alive."

"That's what I say," Henry agreed gloomily; and then, without any
alteration of his tone, or of the dejected thoughtfulness of his
attitude, he changed the subject in a way that painfully startled his
companion. "Have you seen Wallie Torbin to-day, Herbert?"

"What!"

"Have you seen Wallie Torbin to-day?"

Herbert swallowed. "Why, what makes--what makes you ask me that, Henry?"
he said.

"Oh, nothin'." Henry still kept his eyes upon his gloomily scuffing toe.
"I just wondered, because I didn't happen to see him in school this
afternoon when I happened to look in the door of the Eight-A when it was
open. I didn't want to know on account of anything particular. I just
happened to say that about him because I didn't have anything else to
think about just then, so I just happened to think about him, the way you
do when you haven't got anything much on your mind and might get to
thinkin' about you can't tell what. That's all the way it was; I just
happened to kind of wonder if he was around anywhere maybe."

Henry's tone was obviously, even elaborately, sincere; and Herbert was
r