ng to his proposition like a leech.

"Why--maybe--I'd ask Ruth----"

"I'd pay my way," said the boy, sharply, and flushing again. She could
see that he was a very proud boy, in spite of his evident poverty.

"I've got some money saved. I'd earn more--after school. I'm going to
school across the Parade Ground there--when it opens. I've already seen
the superintendent of schools. He says I belong in the highest grammar
grade."

"Why!" cried Agnes, "that's the grade _I_ am going into."

"I'm older than you are," said the boy, with that quick, angry flush
mounting into his cheeks. "I'm fifteen. But I never had a chance to go
to school."

"That is too bad," said Agnes, sympathetically. She saw that he was
eager to enter school and sympathized with him on that point, for she
was eager herself.

"We'll have an awfully nice teacher," she told him. "Miss Shipman."

Just then Ruth appeared at the upper window and looked down upon them.

CHAPTER III

THE PIG IS IMPORTANT

"My goodness! what are you doing down there, Aggie?" demanded Ruth. "And
who's that with you!"

"I--I got up to get a peach, Ruthie," explained Agnes, rather
stammeringly. "And I asked the boy to have one, too."

Ruth, looking out of the bedroom window, expressed her amazement at this
statement by a long, blank stare at her sister and the white-haired boy.
Agnes felt that there was further explanation due from her.

"You see," she said, "he--he just saved my life--perhaps."

"How is that?" gasped Ruth. "Were you going to eat _all_ those peaches
by yourself! They might have killed you, that's a fact."

"No, no!" cried Agnes, while the boy's face flushed up darkly again. "He
saved me from falling out of the tree."

"Out of the tree? _This_ tree!" demanded Ruth. "How did you get into
it?"

"From--from the window."

"Goodness! you never! And with your bathrobe on!" ejaculated Ruth, her
eyes opening wider.

As an "explainer," Agnes was deficient. But she tried to start the story
all over again. "Hush!" commanded Ruth, suddenly. "Wait till I come
down. We'll have everybody in the house awake, and it is too early."

She disappeared and the boy looked doubtfully at Agnes. "Is she the
oldest sister you spoke of?"

"Yes. That's Ruth."

"She's kind of bossy, isn't she?"

"Oh! but we like to be bossed by Ruthie. She's just like mother was to
us," declared Agnes.

"I shouldn't think you'd like it," growled the white-haired boy. "I hate