e family were as yet not awake, so he stretched lazily and
recalled, incident by incident, that blissful afternoon with Louise. How
pretty she had looked when she had opened the oven door, and how
delighted she had been when he had sampled and approved her first
gingerbread! It almost atoned for the defeats at dominoes.

He rolled over. There stood the pig bank on the bureau, staring down at
him with an air which said, plainly as if spoken, "John Fletcher, you're
a failure. Two dollars was your goal for the week. There's but a dollar
and twenty-nine cents in me. What are you going to do about it?"

Nor would it allow his conscience to rest during the hours which
followed. Louise had accepted an invitation to feed the squirrels in the
park that afternoon, so he begged a nickel from his father for peanuts
and rushed in to his mirror to see if his face needed washing. There was
the four-footed caricature to insinuate that he might better be thinking
of means to increase his weekly income, instead of squandering money on
fat, saucy park squirrels.

He was beginning to hate the bit of china. Why hadn't he purchased
instead a mail-box bank that owned no such accusing eyes?

Not until after supper, when he threw himself on the bed to face, for
the first time, the problem of earning a steady weekly income, did the
yellow, glazed features cease to trouble him.

He stared thoughtfully at the flicker of the gas rays against the wavy
markings in the ceiling paper for some minutes. How was a boy to earn
money? What were the channels of revenue by which the "Jefferson
Toughs," Shultz and his ilk, made pitiful contributions to the family
war fund against the enemies of fuel, food, and clothing bills?

Shultz sold papers. Very well, John Fletcher would do likewise. If
twenty papers were sold daily, a weekly revenue of forty-eight cents
would come from that source. The allowance from his father would bring
the amount up to, say, seventy-five cents. Could he hope for five
errands a week from the neighbors? That would make a dollar and a
quarter. But where, oh, where, was the other money to come from?

In any case, hard, persistent work, man's work, lay before him and it
must be done in a man's way. No more tops, marbles, "Run, sheep, run,"
or even snow fights! The thousand dollars which meant a home was to be
earned by his twenty-first birthday, and such trivialities might delay
the achievement of that heart's desire.

The first