et, smiling.

"That Mickey Gaffney thinks he's smart," said Nellie Yarrow, who had
found Brother and Sister in the crowd, as the red-headed boy dashed
past them, waving his stick of tar wildly and shouting like an Indian.

"Do you know him?" asked Sister. "Doesn't he ever wear shoes?"

"I guess so--I don't know. I don't like him," replied Nellie
indifferently.

"I don't believe he has any shoes, not even for Sunday," Brother said
to himself. "His coat was all torn and his mother sewed his pants up
with another kind of cloth so that it shows. I wonder where 'bouts he
lives?"

He opened his mouth to ask Nellie, when Miss Putnam swooped down to the
fence as they were passing her house.

"Go way!" she called, leaving her weeding to wave a rake at them. "Go
'long with you! Don't you drop any of that messy tar on my sidewalk!"

"What lovely flowers!" whispered Sister as they obediently hurried past.

Indeed, Miss Putnam had made a beautiful garden and lawn of her small
yard, and she did all the work of taking care of it herself.

Sister and Brother carried their tar home with them and left it in the
sand heap. Jimmie had six boys playing in the gymnasium with him and
they all stayed to lunch. Molly and Mother Morrison were used to having
unexpected guests, and no matter how many there were, in some
mysterious manner plenty of good things to eat appeared on the table.

"Can we come out and watch you?" asked Brother when the boys were going
back to the barn.

"We're going swimming," answered Jimmie.

"Can't we go swimming?" inquired Sister hopefully.

"You can NOT!" retorted Jimmie. "Why don't you take a nap,
or--something?"

"Come on out to the barn, Roddy," Sister urged Brother when Jimmie and
his friends had gone whistling on their way to the river.

"Now don't you be meddling with any of those things out there," warned
Molly, clearing the table. "Your brother doesn't like you to touch his
exercises, you know."

Molly called all the apparatus the boys used "exercises."

"We're not going to touch 'em!" declared Sister. "We're only going to
look."

Jimmie seldom snapped his padlock, for lately the children had not
bothered the gymnasium in the barn. They found the door open this
afternoon.

"Bet you can't jump off that!" said Sister, pointing to a home-made
"horse" that Jimmie had ingeniously contrived.

(If you don't know the kind of "horse" they use in a gymnasium, ask
your big brother or sister.)