“This paying for deceased poultry,” said Tom, “is getting monotonous. First there were those pedigreed geese up on the river, and now Henry. I know Henry never cost as much as the Janeways say he did.”

“I think we’re paying for all it cost to send him to prep school and college,” suggested Louise, who was staying over a day. “You forget that Henry was intellectual.”

“He was tough,” agreed Tom, “if that’s any sign! So was paying for him.”

“Oh, Tommy dear!” said Winona penitently. “Henry was really my fault. I oughtn’t to let you join in with me. I can pay for Henry very well alone.”

“I think I see you!” said Tom. “No, Winnie, united we stand, divided we fall. I help pay for Henry—see you later—just remembered how late it is.”

He bolted upstairs, leaving Winona, Louise and Billy on the porch staring at each other.

“What’s struck Tom?” asked Billy. “First time I ever knew him to be in a hurry.”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Louise. “I thought you two generally hunted together.”

“Not to-night,” said Billy. He vaulted the railing casually, and walked out into the middle of the lawn, where he could see Tom’s lighted window. “He’s up there with all the lights on, walking the floor as if he had something on his conscience, trying to tie all his neckties, one after another,” reported Billy. “There—there goes the third one. He’s going to try a red one now.”

“I know what it is,” said Winona, seeing a light. “I’ve just remembered. He’s going to call on a girl. He’s been going to for all week, and just got braced up to it. He’s been wearing me out all day, asking me for things to talk to her about. I suppose he’s trying to decide on the necktie that matches his socks best.”

“But, great Scott, he’s been to see girls before!” protested Billy. “I’ve been along when he’s been seeing girls, and fellows, and even old gentlemen, and he never took it so hard.”

“It’s a very particular, grown-up call,” explained Winona, “with a card-case and a cane, and everything like that.”

“What’s the cane for?” asked Billy, who had come back to his seat on the porch. “Girl collecting them?”

“I think it must be for moral support,” put in Louise.

“I didn’t know he had one,” said Billy. “Where did he get it?”

“Christmas present last year,” explained Winona briefly. “Billy, don’t you wish we were all back at Wampoag, having a moonlight swim?”

“I certainly do,” said Billy. “Not but that your porch is nice, too,” he added with the politeness he never seemed to forget.

Before they could lament camp life any further, Tom rushed down the stairs.

“Winnie! Winnie! Where’s my blue scarf?” he called from inside the front door.

“On Louise,” Winona called back promptly. “Don’t you remember, you asked her if she didn’t want to wear it with her sailor-suit?”

“Can I have it, Lou?” he asked, coming out. “I wouldn’t ask you, but it just matches my hatband.”

“Certainly you can have it,” said Louise, with chilly politeness, unfastening it and handing it to him.

“Good-evening, Mr. Merriam,” said Billy, grinning, and rising in order to make a very low bow. “I never thought you were this far on the way to being a perfect lady, old boy—Mr. Merriam, I mean.”

“Going to call on an awfully correct girl,” said Tom off-handedly. “I say, Lou, can I have that blue class-pin of yours?”

“Certainly,” said Louise again, still more coldly, detaching it and holding it out. “Anything else you think you’d like?”

“Not that I can think of,” said Tom, taking the class-pin. “That’s a good old Lou,” he ended, adding insult to injury. Then he sat down and pulled out his mother’s celluloid memorandum tablets. He laid them on his knee and looked at them earnestly, as he adjusted the tie and the class-pin.

“Did you think of any more things for me to say after I landed the California Exposition on her?” he asked his sister.

Winona looked over at Billy to see if he saw the funny side of it. There was no use looking at Louise, for in her present sulky frame of mind she would not have seen anything funny in a whole joke-book.

“How would the next election do?” she suggested gravely.

“M-m—all right,” said Tom, entering it. “That won’t last forever, though, because all you can ever do is guess which man will get it. I think you might help a fellow out, Lou. You’re generally so clever.”

“Ask her how she likes her hats trimmed,” said Louise scornfully, without turning around to him.

“Oh, no,” said Tom, “that’s too silly a question.” But he put it down just the same. “Let’s see. That ought to carry me on till nearly nine.... CÆsar! It’s time I went! Don’t mind if I go off and leave you, do you Bill?”

“Not a bit!” said Billy calmly. “I’m all right. But”—Billy’s eyes twinkled—“don’t you really think you ought to wear your tuxedo, old fellow? Much more correct, you know. I saw it in a Hints to Best Dressers’ column awhile ago. It said that no true gentleman was without evening clothes in the evening.”

Tom looked uneasy, but he was firm.

“I won’t get into that thing for anything less than a dance or a hand-made clerical dinner,” he said, thoughtlessly jamming his hat down over one ear the way he usually wore it, then putting it straight with a jerk. “Great Scott! I must hurry!”

“My ears and whiskers! The Duchess! Won’t I catch it if I’m late!” quoted Louise scornfully from Alice in Wonderland, as Tom dived down the steps.

“What on earth’s got into Tom!” asked Billy. “The idea of doing that because you like it!”

“I don’t know,” said Winona. “It is queer, isn’t it?”

“Going off acting like he was all grown up!” mused Billy, still lost in wonder at such a waste of a perfectly good evening.

“I do wish you wouldn’t always say ‘like’ for ‘as if,’ Billy,” interrupted Louise sharply. “I hate it.”

“We always say it that way down home,” said Billy.

“That’s no reason for your doing it here! Being born in China doesn’t make it good manners for you to eat with chopsticks,” said Louise, walking into the house and slamming the screen-door behind her.

“Can’t Ah help yo’ find yo’ tempah, Louise?” Billy called teasingly after her, with a purposely exaggerated Southern accent. There was no answer.

“You’d be cross, too, if you were Louise,” Winona defended her friend. “One of the things she stayed down from camp over to-night for was that she and Tom were going off to kodak some cloud effects for a magazine prize. And she was going to try to get some photographs that would count in Camp Fire work, too. And Tom’s walked off, forgetting all about it.”

“Why didn’t you remind him?” asked Billy sensibly.

“Louise wouldn’t let me. She said she’d go straight back if I did.”

“Well, she needn’t have taken it out on me,” said Billy plaintively. “I didn’t break any engagements. I suppose she has a red-haired temper.”

Meanwhile Louise, after she banged the screen-door, had gone straight through the house to the back. Mrs. Merriam was in the living-room, which prevented her crying there. She was very much hurt at Tom’s forgetfulness. They had been chums for a long time, and this particular expedition after cloud effects had been something they had planned long before the Scouts’ camp broke up. And now Tom had gone gayly off, forgetting all about it. It really was horrid.

Crying on a bed is hot work in summer, so she decided to go out back and do it. She sat on the porch, put her arms on the back of a chair and began to cry.

But circumstances seemed to be against her. Puppums, who had been asleep under a chair, got up, yawned, sauntered across the porch, and sat down by her. Then he proceeded to whine for her to turn around, make a lap, and take him up into it.

“Oh, do stop!” said Louise indignantly, when the whining had gone on steadily for some minutes. But if you took any notice of Puppums he merely argued that a little more work would get him what he wanted, and went on begging. In the present instance he answered Louise by lifting his nose further up in the air, and howling, as if he wished to assure her that he felt for her.

“You mean old dog!” said Louise, jumping up. “I’ll settle you!” Puppums was very much pleased. He had an optimistic disposition, and he thought it was a game. He ran around and around the porch, finally, when he began to see that Louise was in earnest, hiding under the ice-chest, where he knew nobody could follow him. Louise stopped short, and eyed the ice-box. It occurred to her that she was thirsty.

“This is what you might call being guided,” said she, and opening the lid, looked in. She found a bag of lemons, a bunch of bananas, and she thought she remembered where Winona kept the bottled cherries and the cookies. She went into the kitchen and began work, and in a very little while was on her way back to the front porch with a tray, designed to show her remorse for being cross, piled with cookies and fruit lemonade. Mrs. Merriam, to whom she offered the first glass, pronounced it very good indeed, and sent her on her way. Puppums danced wildly about her, with the idea that she was clearing a table, and he might get bones.

Winona and Billy were still talking as placidly as if Tom had not been wrestling with a formal call, and Louise with a bad temper, for the last twenty minutes.

“Cookies—oh, and fruit lemonade! Louise, you dear!” cried Winona, while Billy took the tray and put it on a table.

“Won’t you have some, Billy? I know you like it, and—and I do like your Southern accent,” she added in a rush.

“Thank you, Louise,” said Billy. “I like your accent, too—and your fruit lemonade—very much.”

They both laughed. “Let’s bury the hatchet,” he added. “Louise, these certainly are fine cookies.”

The three were still sitting comfortably over their refreshments, even Puppums crunching cakes contentedly in a corner, when Tom hurried up the steps and banged himself down in a chair. His hat was jammed to one side in the old unceremonious fashion, his gloves had vanished, and even his cane was nowhere to be seen.

“Have some,” said Billy tactfully before Tom could say anything. They pushed the cakes toward him, and poured him some lemonade in Winona’s glass, and after he seemed less gloomy they got him to talk.

“Tell us all about it,” said Winona soothingly.

“Nothing to tell!” said Tom in something rather like a growl.

“Have another cooky, and tell us all about it,” repeated his sister in a persuasive voice. And after awhile, when he had had some more cookies and another glass of lemonade, he told them, gradually.

“Well, I sent in my card, of course,” he began. “Asked for Miss Davis.”

“Of course!” said Winona; for her brother’s usual custom was to call up from the sidewalk, “I’m coming over to-night,” and then to walk unceremoniously in whenever he thought of it, that evening.

“I did that all right, thank goodness!” said Tom. “The maid kept me waiting about a year, with a copy of Snowbound, and a Gems from Shakespeare, and a pug-dog made out of plaster, to amuse me. The Davises never seem to sit around in their rooms and on their porches like other people. Just as I got to the point of thinking I’d better go back home Mrs. Davis walked in. I was so surprised at seeing her, instead of Elsie, that I couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say—so I fished up this!”

He jerked the tablets out of his pocket and threw them to Winona.

“Keep ’em away from me,” he said. “I never want to see the blessed things again. First thing I found was ‘Civil War.’ I’d picked out that for a start anyway—thought it would be nice and general, and we had it in History last term, so I knew a lot about it. You’d have thought that would have lasted awhile, wouldn’t you?”

“Seeing that the real thing lasted four years or so, I think it might have,” answered Billy.

“Not a bit of it!” said Tom mournfully. “Mrs. Davis turned out to have had a grand-uncle or something in it, and she said it was a painful subject. I don’t think she ever had a grand-uncle. I believe she didn’t know anything about it, and just invented the old fellow to get out of talking about it!”

“Mercy, what suspicions!” said Winona, laughing. “You certainly have nearly ruined your lovely disposition. Never mind, Tommy, I sympathize with you. What did you tackle next?”

“Tariff-reform, I think,” said Tom.

“What is tariff-reform?” asked Winona. “I never could understand it exactly.”

“Don’t ask me to say it all over again!” begged Tom. “I was getting anxious by that time for fear I wouldn’t have subjects enough left to use on Elsie. You know she isn’t much of a talker. But I had to say something, and Mrs. Davis didn’t, and I couldn’t think of anything but this foolish book. Mrs. Davis didn’t seem to care much about tariff-reform, either, so I gave that up and looked at the list again, and chose ‘Weather.’ She did warm up a little at that. But the best weather won’t last forever, and you could just hear the silence bump every little while.

“Then I got desperate, and used up Politics and Canoeing and the California Fair, and all the rest. Folks, I finished off every last thing I was going to talk to Elsie about, before she ever appeared! Except about trimming hats—that seemed such a foolish thing to ask a woman that old about.”

“They discussed Measles and Mice, and Music, and everything else that began with an M,” quoted Louise from her favorite Alice in Wonderland.

“Don’t mind her,” said Billy as soberly as he could. “Just go on. Did Elsie Davis ever come down at all?”

“Yes,” said Tom, “she did. Just as I finished my last subject, if you please! She seemed to be dressed for a party, but she said she wasn’t. She sat down at the other end of the room, and tried to see if she couldn’t keep as still as her mother. Mrs. Davis stayed right there, too, and smiled like an alligator—and there was I without an idea in my head or on the memorandum!”

“Didn’t they even show you the photograph album?” inquired Louise, forgetting to be offended.

“They wouldn’t talk, I tell you!”

“Well, what did you do?” asked Louise.

Tom grinned a little, shamefacedly.

“Well—I simply yanked out that old tablet, and began at Civil War again. I said ‘As I was just saying to your mother!’ and I gave her every subject over!”

His hearers howled, and after a minute Tom himself joined in. “Did it work better this time?” asked Winona at last, wiping her eyes.

“Not a work,” said Tom cheerfully, reaching for the last cooky. “That is, all but the hat one. That was clever of you, Lou. She got almost human over that, and began to talk about how many engagements she had—had to break half of them. And I said ‘I don’t believe in breaking dates,’ and suddenly I remembered the one with you to take the pictures—and I left then and there, like a streak of lightning. I left my cane—I don’t care—she can have it to remember me by. Louise, I owe you an apology the size of the house. Why didn’t you remind me about those snapshots?”

“It’s not too late,” said Louise amiably. “The moon’s just about right, now.”

Tom went into the house after the cameras, sending his hat flying up to the hat-tree, followed by his gloves.

“Let’s go, too,” said Billy.

“All right,” said Winona. She leaned back, and laughed, as they waited for the others to come out.

“I don’t believe Tom will try any more formal calls till he’s eighteen, anyway,” she remarked.

“It seems a pity, though,” said Billy, getting up. “He wasted a perfectly good cane!”