stones and sometimes not
succeeding, I was quite ready to quit. Old Hundred, flushed and
perspiring, was playing as if his life depended on it. When he was
tagged, he took his turn as It without a murmur. He was one of the
kids, and they knew it. But finally he, too, felt the pace in his
bones. We left the boys still playing, quite careless of whether we
went or stayed. We were dusty and hot; our hands were scratched and
grimed. "Ah!" said Old Hundred, looking back, "I've accomplished
something to-day and had a good time doing it! The ungrateful little
savages; they might have said good-bye."

"Yet you wouldn't pull up the mumblety-peg for me," I said.

"My dear fellow," he replied, "that is quite different. To take a dare
from a man is childish. Not to take a dare from a child is unmanly."

"You talk like G. K. Chesterton," said I.

"Which shows that occasionally Chesterton is right," said he.
"Speaking of dares, I'd like to see a gang of kids playing dares or
follow-your-leader right now. Remember how we used to play
follow-your-leader by the hour? You had to do just what he did, like a
row of sheep. When there were girls in the game, you always ended up
by turning a somersault, which was a subtle jest never to be too much
enjoyed."

"And Alice Perkins used to take that dare, too, I remember," said I.

"Alice never could bear to be stumped," he mused. "She's either become
a mighty fine woman or a bad one. She was the only girl we ever
allowed to perform in the circuses up in your backyard. Often we
wouldn't even admit girls as spectators. Remember the sign you painted
to that effect? She was the lady trapeze artist and bareback rider.
You were the bareback, as I recall it--or was it Fatty Newell? Anyhow,
one of her stunts was to hang by her legs and drink a tumbler of
water."

I felt my muscles. "I wonder," said I, "if I could still skin the
cat?"

"I'll bet I can chin myself ten times," said Old Hundred.

We cast about for a convenient limb. There was an apple-tree beside
the road, with a horizontal limb some eight feet above the ground. I
tried first. I got myself over all right, till I hung inverted, my
fountain-pen, pencil, and eyeglass case falling out of my pocket. But
there I stuck. There was no strength in my arms to pull me up. So I
curled clean over and dropped to the ground, very red in the face, my
clothes covered with the powdered apple-tree bark. Old Hundred grasped
the limb to chin himself.