uences, and every time
he awoke in the night a dread of the morrow came upon him. In the
morning he rushed off to school, found the team had won the game, and
came home feeling even more justified than before. Why, if he had not
taken the car, the school might have forfeited that victory!

All the afternoon as he sat quietly at his books he tried to keep this
consideration uppermost in his mind. Then at dinner time there was a
stir in the hall and he knew the moment he feared had arrived. The
family were back again! Slowly he stole down over the heavily carpeted
stairs. Yes, there they were, just coming in at the door, laughing and
chatting gaily with Julia, who had let them in. The next instant his
mother had espied him on the landing and had called a greeting.

There was a smile on her face that reproached him for having yielded to
the temptation to deceive her even for a second.

"Such a delightful trip as we have had, Steve!" she called. "We wished a
dozen times that you were with us. But some vacation you shall have a
holiday in New York with your father to pay for what you have missed
this time. You shall not be cheated out of all the fun, dear boy!"

"Everything been all right here, son?" inquired his father from the foot
of the stairs.

"Yes, Dad."

"Havens has not showed up yet, I suppose."

The boy flushed.

"No, sir."

"It seems to take him an interminable time to have his tonsils out. If
he does not appear pretty soon I shall have to get another man to run
the car. We can't be left high and dry like this," fretted the elder man
irritably. "Suppose I knew nothing about it, where would we be? I wished
to-day you were old enough to have a license and could have come to the
station to meet us. I believe with a little more instruction you could
manage that automobile all right. Not that I should let you go racing
over the country with a lot of boys. But you might be very useful in
taking your mother and sister about and helping when we were in a fix
like this. I think you would enjoy doing it, too."

"I--I'm--sure I should," replied the lad, avoiding his father's eye and
studying the toe of his shoe intently. It passed through his mind as he
stood there that now was the moment for confession. He had only to say,

"_I had the car out yesterday_," and the dreaded ordeal would be over.
But somehow he could not utter the words. Instead he descended from the
landing and followed the others into the librar