ped to earn a little money; that was
all.

"Is your room picked up?"

"No."

"And the front porch has to be hosed off for Sunday; never mind the
neighbors until my work's finished, son."

Mothers must have forty-'leven pairs of ears to catch fellows the way
they did. He stopped to argue with her, but she shook her head
impatiently.

"That won't do a bit of good, John. You're just wasting time when you're
talking this way."

She was right. And wasting time meant just so many minutes less in which
to earn a dollar and four cents. He scampered upstairs and pitched the
book which had lain under the bed since a certain clandestine
night-reading session into the case. Next, his odds and ends of clothing
and ties were thrown on the closet floor with a prayer that they might
not be discovered before he made his escape. With his bureau top set
hastily in order, he reported for duty below. Out with the hose-reel and
up with the nozzle on the porch. A twist of the key, and the water
spurted forth while his mother watched the procedure in amazement. He
was taking five minutes for work which consumed twenty-five, ordinarily!

But when the water splashed against the sun-blistered clapboards of the
veranda wall, his spurt of energy diminished. He adjusted the nozzle
until the fine spray came from the hose and watched the miniature
rainbow in the bright sunlight. An earnest spider was repairing a web up
under the eaves in anticipation of coming storms, and John shifted back
to the hard stream to dislodge the industrious spinner. The old cat
trotted around from the back porch and made faces at a squirrel which
had strayed from the park to enjoy the more munificent bounty which the
kind-hearted housewives and children on the street offered. He shot the
quarrel-quelling stream in their direction, and the pair scampered away
to safety. As yet a good half of the porch was untouched by water, and
he dropped the hose to the floor with the nozzle pointed toward the
baseboard, while little rivulets trickled over the dust-strewn boards
until they joined larger streams, just as the little black river lines
in his school maps did.

There was a sudden, sharp tapping at the window which fronted the porch.
Mrs. Fletcher's voice jerked him from the clouds of miniature
geographical research to the realities of his task.

"John! Half an hour's gone already. Do get the hose reeled up!"

A few hasty strokes of the broom--his mother's best, ta