"You sent it?" he sneered.

"I did," DuPree replied. Louise watched the two eagerly.

"Why that cost all of a quarter. And kids who asks folks to have sundaes and then can't pay for them, don't spend that much for valentines.

Cheapskates never do!"

Sid scowled. Before he could make suitable reply, Miss Brown rapped for order and he had to go back to his seat. There, as he squirmed in his seat while waiting for the dismissal bell, he caught John looking at him and stuck out his tongue as a manifestation of his scorn. But that gentleman only grinned. Wrongfully or no, he knew that the credit for the twenty-five cent valentine had been given to him, and he was content to let matters rest as they were.

Valentine's day past, Washington's birthday was the one festive oasis left for the children in the desert of school days. Though the cold weather held marvelously well, little by little the thermometer beside the drug store's door showed rising-temperature levels as John stopped to look at it on the way to school. The long, northern shadows which the houses and apartments cast against the soot-grayed snow were shortening rapidly, and his paper route, so long patrolled in entire or semi-darkness, was now completed just as dusk set in.

Then Miss Brown reached back in her desk drawer for a certain packet of narrow manila envelopes, that last February afternoon, and brought to a certain small boy who occupied the seat just in front of her desk, sudden realization that March was upon the cla.s.s.

"Please have them signed and returned by Monday," she told the pupils as she distributed them.

John drew the white, finger-marked card from the ragged envelope, and his face went first white and then scarlet as his eye followed the long column of marks. Accusing memories of lessons half done or postponed with a hope that teacher wouldn't call on him, of a skating party with Louise when a geography map should have been outlined, and of arithmetic papers hurriedly done in the half-hour "B" cla.s.s recitation period, to be returned with a heavily penciled "20" or "30" across their surfaces, arose to annoy him. His teacher spoke again.

"There are one or two boys and girls in the 'A' cla.s.s who will have to do better next month," John fancied that she was looking squarely at him, "or they'll be sent down into the 'B' division."

That wasn't the worst of the matter. He had to take that testimonial of disgrace _home_ to be signed, and duly commented upon, by his mother.

The card reposed safely in his pocket over Sat.u.r.day, while he pondered now and then upon the least painful method of breaking the news to her.

Sunday pa.s.sed. On Monday morning, as he stood up from the breakfast table, he broke out,

"Mother!"

"Yes, son?"

His courage vanished, and he was unable to go any further.

"What is it?" she asked.

"N-nothing. It was a peachy breakfast." He kissed her nervously and went into the hall for his coat.

"I forgot to bring it," he told Miss Brown that morning school session.

At noon, he had the same excuse.

"Well, if it isn't here tomorrow morning, I'll send you home after it,"

that sophisticated supervisor of juveniles replied. And with this uncomfortable fact ever in his mind, he set out on the afternoon journey with the newspapers.

The weather seemed to have shaped itself for his mood. A curious, raw dampness had crept into the still air, and overhead was a level, sullen expanse of gray vapor. Locomotive smoke showed that the light breeze had shifted suddenly to the south, and there was an indefinable att.i.tude of expectancy about, as if the big city with its varied expanse of buildings and vacant lots and snow-filled parks was waiting for something. As he stamped up the front porch steps and kicked the snow from his shoe soles, a fine, almost invisible drizzle began.

Blame that report card, anyway. Perhaps if he presented it with the "hundred" spelling paper that very day, his mother wouldn't be too severe with him. He'd try that experiment in the morning, anyway.

But upon waking, he stared from his window in delight at the spectacle which the capricious weather had formed for him. The rain had increased as the night pa.s.sed, and had frozen upon the chilled trees and house roofs. The linden on the Fletcher lawn was coated with fairy lace work, and the denuded lilac bush across the way shone black through its gla.s.sy covering. The long expanse of dark, cement walk which flanked each side of the snowy road was coated with ice and made walking for pedestrians a matter of some danger. As he jerked his tie into position, Perry Alford shot past on his skates, and he hurried down to breakfast. He'd have a little of that sport before school, himself.

But as he rose joyously from the table, he stopped short. There was that report card; and he knew that his plans were shattered. Mrs. Fletcher's remarks upon his many deficiencies would consume every minute of the time before school.

"My report," he said briefly. She looked at it.

"John!"

He gazed out of the window in a forlorn effort to appear unconcerned.

"Reading, 'F'," quoted Mrs. Fletcher, "and last month it was 'G'."

He drew out his watch and set the big hand forward ten minutes. If he used a little strategy, he could at least shorten the lecture by that amount of time.

"Arithmetic, 'P'," she went on. "And geography, 'P'. And you told me you had all your lessons done when I gave you permission to go skating those evenings. I'm very much displeased with you."

He grew desperate. When Mrs. Fletcher began to talk about being displeased and grieved, there was trouble ahead. He drew a much-chewed pencil from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

"Hurry and sign, Mother," he begged. "It's school time."

She scribbled a reluctant signature at the bottom and looked at it thoughtfully. "I'll keep this to show to your father this evening."

"I've had it three days already," he blurted. "It's got to go back today."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the card from her hand, showed his watch as she protested, and fled for his coat. Once at the corner, he stopped running and smiled. The escape had been fairly easy and with a minimum of fuss, and he was immeasurably light-hearted, now that the report card bugaboo was off his mind.

At Southern Avenue, he caught up with Sid, Silvey, and Perry Alford.

Bits of ice dropped from the trees to the walk as they sauntered along, and water dripped from the icicles on the eaves of the apartments and stores as the morning rise in temperature began to take effect.

"Feel's as if it's going to thaw," said Silvey as they came to a very slippery stretch of walk. So the quartette slid up and down on the ice as long after the second a.s.sembly bell as they dared, and with the fear of tardiness upon them, dashed for the school yard.

His pocket was empty, and his conscience clear, and the morning session pa.s.sed swiftly for John. At noon, as the long lines filed into the school yard to freedom, he looked about him with delight.

The winter's deposit of snow was melting into little rivulets which trickled merrily along wagon ruts until they came to the street drains.

First-graders stopped to splash soggy s...o...b..a.l.l.s into a huge puddle which had collected in the street just beyond the alley, and the drip-drip-drip of the water, from the trees and buildings to the wet, glistening sidewalks was as music to his ears. He broke into a run toward home from pure exuberance of feelings, and halted now and then to fill his lungs with the sunlit, pregnant air which the south wind had brought.

The thought of the continuation of the "penny lecture" which was waiting failed to dampen his spirits, even though it threatened curtailment of his evenings with Louise. For if the skating parties were over, spring with its marbles, tops, and kindred delights had arrived and all sorrow fled before it.

CHAPTER XV

THE SPRING BRINGS BASEBALL

Little by little the snow disappeared. During the first days of the thaw, lethargic city employees chopped paths through the melting ice to the street drains. Bare edges of the cement walks appeared in places, and at night the puddles and pools in the street hollows bore a thin, frozen covering. As the month pa.s.sed, the crystals became more and more rare, and green areas of gra.s.s appeared on the more exposed portions of the neighborhood lawns. The children turned from their sport of sailing sticks and improvised boats down the trickling, artificial brooklets to take part in games of "Run, sheep, run" and "Hide-and-seek" over the rapidly softening turf. A pelting, refreshing rain from the south drove away the last soot-stained vestiges of the snow lying in the protecting shadows between the houses, and presto, Miss Thomas' little store displayed a window stock of agates, catseyes, and common clay marbles to tempt pennies from boyish pockets.

Then, after school, during recess, and for long minutes before the afternoon session, the alley which flanked the school yard was marked with rings of varying dimensions. The air resounded with cries of, "No hudgins," "H'ist," "Your shot," or "You dribbled," as the players contested for prizes of five- and six-for-a-cent clay marbles.

Occasionally two of the big eighth-grade boys would draw a six-foot circle in the earth and play for "K'nicks, dime ones," and the game would bring a crowd, three deep, from the neighboring players to applaud or gasp at each shot.

Even John, man of business that he was, could not resist the temptation.

The last traces of that autumnal scorn toward "such foolishness"

vanished as he became the owner of two shooters and a pocketful of the more common marbles.

The clan spirit among the different boyish cliques at school revived again. Skinny Mosher, who had hugged the warm house during the coldest days of the winter, caught suddenly up with John and Silvey as they frolicked home for dinner, and brought the news that a "Jefferson Tough"