Jerry tried to be quiet, but he bumped into the one chair in the kitchen on his way to the kitchen cupboard. And it was not his fault that the cream pitcher fell when he took the sugarbowl from the shelf. Jerry made a quick and nice southpaw catch. Pretty good, he thought, for a right-hander. He hadn't been able to use his right because it was holding the sugarbowl. He had dumped the sugar into a cereal dish and was busily pouring salt into the sugarbowl when his mother entered the kitchen.

"What on earth are you doing up so early on Saturday?" Mrs. Martin asked sleepily. "It's only half-past six."

Jerry's blue eyes begged his mother to share a joke with him. "I woke up and remembered it's April Fools' Day," he said and chuckled. "Can't you just see Dad's face when he tastes his coffee with two spoonfuls of salt in it instead of sugar?"

"No, Jerry," said his mother. "No. It wouldn't be at all funny to spoil your father's morning coffee. It would be tragic. Put the salt back, rinse out the sugarbowl, and refill it with sugar. And no more April-fooling with your father's breakfast."

"Aw, I never can have any fun around here," Jerry complained. Salt spilled on the floor when he poured it from the sugarbowl back into the spout of the salt box.

"Sweep it up," ordered his mother, and Jerry had to get out the brush and dustpan.

When he went to the sink to rinse the sugarbowl, Jerry turned on the hot water so hard that he had to draw his hand back quickly or it would have been scalded. The sugarbowl fell in the sink and broke.

"Oh, dear! I need cast-iron dishes instead of china if you're to handle them," scolded Mrs. Martin.

"It just slipped out of my hands. I can mend it. That new glue I bought last week will mend china, glass, wood—anything. It says so on the tube."

Jerry looked so sorry for having broken the sugarbowl that his mother stopped being cross. "It was cracked anyway," she said consolingly. "Now go get dressed. As long as you're up you may as well stay up. Maybe I can get a little work out of you since you've got such an early start on the day."

Jerry groaned. What a dreary word—work! Just hearing it made him feel tired.

"I'll have pancakes ready in fifteen minutes," said his mother brightly. "With real maple syrup," she added.

Jerry could tell that she was tempting his appetite so he would not be tempted to go back to bed again. He did not mind. He was wide awake. It would be a novelty to have breakfast so early on a Saturday. Almost an April Fool joke on his mother.

"And to think that last Saturday I could hardly get you out of bed at ten," said his mother as he left the kitchen.

At a little before nine Jerry had a broom in his hand. His orders were to sweep off the front steps. He went at it in a very leisurely manner. The sooner he finished the sooner his mother might give him some other chore to do. Even though Laura, the pleasant three-times-a-week maid, did most of the cleaning, Mrs. Martin believed her children should have a few household chores. Cathy, Jerry's twin sister, had to do the breakfast dishes on Saturdays, and even five-year-old Andy, the youngest member of the Martin family, was supposed to empty the wastebaskets.

Jerry's lazy broom finished the top step and began on the second. Then it occurred to him that it had been some time since he had investigated what was under the steps. He put down his broom while he knelt and applied one eye to one of the holes bored in the steps. The hole was big enough so if somebody dropped a dime just right it would go through. No dimes down there today.

As Jerry got to his feet he looked with approval at the big white clapboarded house where he lived. The morning sun made the small-paned windows shine. The Martin house was on the very edge of northwest Washington, D. C. It had been one of the original farmhouses when that part of Washington had been country, not city. Now there were houses all around, and it had been remodeled long before the Martins had bought it. Jerry's father and mother were proud of the old floorboards and wide fireplaces. Jerry especially liked the house because it had an attic and a big garage that had been a barn.

As he picked up his broom again, his twin sister came to the door to shake a dustcloth. Also, he was sure, to check up on what he was doing.

"Cathy!" cried Jerry. "There's a great big spider crawling up your left leg."

Cathy did not let a yip out of her. "You can't April-fool me that easy," she said in a superior-sounding way that irritated Jerry.

Lately he and his twin often irritated each other. For one thing Cathy had recently developed an intense interest in how she looked, which seemed silly to Jerry.

"Better wipe that black off your left cheek," he said, and laughed when Cathy raised her hand to her cheek. "April Fool! Got you that time," he exulted.

"Think you're smart, don't you?" grumbled Cathy. "Half the time you don't even notice it when your face is dirty. To say nothing of your ears."

Jerry swushed dirt off a step and changed the subject. "Have you fooled anybody yet this morning?" he asked.

"Just Andy. I asked him if he knew that Bibsy had grown another head during the night, and he almost cried when he found I was April-fooling him. He said he had always wanted a two-headed cat. Then when I asked him if he had seen the alligator under the dining room table, he wouldn't look. He just said, 'What's a nalligator?' I told him it was like Mummy's handbag only much, much bigger, and he wants to see a real one. Mummy says we must take him to the zoo someday soon. But I can't remember seeing an alligator there, can you?"

Cathy tossed her head, giving her pony tail a little exercise.

"Too bad you didn't say seal instead of alligator. There are seals at the zoo. Say, I wouldn't mind going to the zoo this forenoon. Even if we have to take Andy. Want to?"

"Nope. Mummy's taking me to town to buy a new dress for Easter." Cathy's eyes were bright with expectation.

It was beyond Jerry why Cathy should be pleased to waste good playing time in town buying a dress. She didn't used to be that way. She used to complain bitterly about having to change from blue jeans into a dress. She still liked wearing jeans, yet there came a shine in her eyes at even the mention of buying a new dress. Mummy said that eleven-going-on-twelve was getting to be a young lady. "Rats!" thought Jerry. It was silly for Cathy to begin to be young-lady-like when she could throw a baseball just about as well as a boy and sometimes better.

"Jerry!" called his mother from a front window. "I want you to run to the store for me. Right away."

"Can't Cathy go?" Jerry really did not mind running (though he usually walked or rode his bike to the store) but it was a matter of principle with him to make a try at getting out of work.

"I have other things for Cathy to do," said Mrs. Martin and shut the window.

There were two steps still unswept but Jerry left them untouched by his lazy broom. After all, how could he be expected to do two things at once? He wished, not for the first time, that his mother would do her grocery shopping at the supermarket, which was far enough away so she would have to take the car. Instead, she mostly traded at Bartlett's, a small old-fashioned store three blocks from where the Martin family lived.

"There aren't many small grocery stores left and since we have one right in the neighborhood I like to patronize it," Jerry had heard his mother say. She liked stores where the owner came to wait on you. But Jerry suspected that one reason she traded at Bartlett's was because she thought it was good for a boy to run errands.

Going to the store was Jerry's chief chore. "Just because her grandfather had to chop wood and milk cows before breakfast when he was a boy, she thinks she should keep me busy," he grumbled to himself as he went in the house. "Why do I have to go to the store? Bartlett delivers. Why can't she telephone her order and have it delivered?"

He knew that the answer to that was more than his mother's desire to keep him busy. It was partly because she did not like to plan meals ahead. A brisk cold day might make her feel like having pork chops and hot applesauce for dinner. Or for a warm day, a platter of cold cuts and deviled eggs.

"It's just the day for calves' liver and bacon," she might say when Jerry got home from school in the afternoon. And she would send him to the store for a pound and a half of fresh calves' liver cut thin, "the way Mr. Bartlett knows I like it." A meal, his mother thought, should match her mood or the weather. She kept a few frozen vegetables on hand in case of need, but she much preferred fresh vegetables, freshly cut steaks and chops—fresh almost anything which could be bought fresh.

"I know it's a frozen food age but I still prefer my meat and vegetables fresh," Mrs. Martin often said. That meant a lot of trips to the store. Too many, Jerry thought. Especially on Saturdays, when she needed a lot of things.

His mother was in the kitchen mixing dough for doughnuts. Jerry was glad she made doughnuts instead of buying bakery ones. How good doughnuts tasted hot out of the fat! He wished a few of them were done so he could have two or three to eat on his way to the store.

"Want me to fry 'em for you and then go to the store?" he offered.

"No. I need a carton of sour cream right away for my chocolate cake. And, let me see—five pounds of Idaho potatoes, two pounds of ground round steak—I feel like having meat loaf tonight—and two acorn squash, an avocado, a dozen oranges, and one loaf of white bread and one of whole wheat. Oh, and I've already telephoned and told Mr. Bartlett that you would be in to pick up a leg of lamb. He has spring lamb just in. You'll have to take your cart. There'll be too much for you to carry in your bicycle basket."

Jerry had felt lately that he was too old to be dragging home a cart filled with groceries. "How long will it be before Andy can take that old cart to the store? He can have it to keep any old time he'll take it to the store after groceries."

"You've only had it a year. Said you would be sure to use it for years. And you know Andy isn't nearly old enough to take a big cart out of the yard. Now run along. And don't stop to play on the way home."

Jerry got his cart out of the garage. The wheels squeaked but that didn't bother him. He met a couple of boys in his grade at school on his way to the store and arranged for baseball later.

Bartlett's store was on a street zoned only for houses, yet because the store had been there before the zoning law was passed it had been allowed to remain. The present proprietor was the third generation of Bartletts who had sold groceries there. He was a stout, pink-faced man, quite bald in front. Jerry said that Mr. Bartlett's forehead went way to the back of his head. When Jerry went in the store, Mr. Bartlett was waiting on a tall woman with a blue scarf over her head, and Bill, the clerk who put up orders, was tossing groceries into cartons, each carton for a customer.

Jerry had to wait while the woman with the blue scarf decided what she would have for Sunday dinner. It seemed to take her a long time to make up her mind. After trying without much success to engage Bill in conversation, Jerry stood in front of the candy showcase next to the cash register and wished he had money with him besides the ten-dollar bill his mother had given him to pay for the groceries.

My, but the candy looked yummy! There were glass trays of round mints, pink, white, green, and yellow. And caramels, chocolate-covered nuts, coconut bonbons, chocolate nougats—nothing there Jerry didn't like. He looked at the candy yearningly.

Now the lady had decided on a sirloin steak, thank goodness. Another customer came in but Jerry would be next to be waited on. He would speak right up and say he was next if Mr. Bartlett started to wait on somebody else first, he decided.

The lady wearing the blue scarf reached into her handbag and got out her billfold. "I want to pay my March grocery bill," she said. She stood beside Jerry near the cash register while Mr. Bartlett was behind the counter giving her change.

"Don't go off without your little bonus," said Mr. Bartlett. "My daddy and my granddaddy before him always gave folks a little bonus when they paid their bills."

Jerry saw Mr. Bartlett get out a half-pound pasteboard box. Saw him reach in the showcase and bring out enough candy to fill two rows in the box. Jerry had heard that Mr. Bartlett gave candy to charge customers when they paid their bills, but he had never before been in the store and seen it happen. The sight saddened him. For he knew that never for him would Mr. Bartlett fill a half-pound box of candy as a gift. The Martin family never charged groceries. They never charged anything. Mr. Martin believed in paying cash for everything. Even for a new car. He was funny that way. Jerry had never much minded until this minute when he saw a charge customer rewarded for being a charge customer.

"Wish we had a charge account. I wouldn't have to worry about losing money on the way home, if we did," thought Jerry, remembering the tendency of loose change to fall out of his pocket when he jumped over hedges. "Besides, Mr. Bartlett must want people to have charge accounts or he wouldn't give them a bonus when they pay their bills. Stands to reason. He likes to have folks charge their groceries instead of paying cash, so a charge account must be a good thing. Wish my father thought so. If he were here and saw Mr. Bartlett hand over that free candy, he'd be bound to see it pays to charge your groceries."

"Now, young man, what can I do for you?" asked Mr. Bartlett. Jerry had been thinking so hard about the advantages of having a charge account that he had hard work remembering what his mother had sent him to the store for. But he managed to recollect all but the avocado. Jerry didn't like avocados so it was easy for him to forget that. It was while Mr. Bartlett was counting out a dozen oranges that Jerry had what he considered a very bright idea. There was a way he could convince his father that Bartlett's store was the one place where it didn't pay to pay cash.

"It won't be dishonest," Jerry argued to himself. "I won't be getting a cent out of it. Only a box of candy at the end of the month. And if we eat an awful lot and the bill is nice and big for April, maybe Mr. Bartlett will give me a pound box of candy instead of a half pound."

The plan that had popped into Jerry's mind was this—he would not pay for groceries for the month of April but charge them. He would keep in a safe place the money his mother gave him to pay for them. And the first day of May he would come in with it and pay the bill and be given a box of candy.

"When I take the candy home and pass the box to Dad, he'll see it's a good thing to charge our groceries," thought Jerry. The scene was so vivid in his mind that he could almost see his father taking a chocolate-covered almond.

"I said that will be eight dollars and twenty-one cents," said Mr. Bartlett, a bit impatiently.

Jerry reached in his pocket and got out his mother's coin purse. He preferred carrying money loose in his pocket but she had said he could risk losing his own money that way, not hers. It was while he was opening the purse that he suddenly decided to try out his bright idea.

"Charge it, please," he said huskily.

"You folks opening a charge account?" asked Mr. Bartlett.

"Isn't that all right with you?"

"Sure. Sure. You've been trading with me for years. And your father's credit is good as gold, which is more than I can say for some." Mr. Bartlett made out a slip, which he put in the bag of groceries.

"He knows me and can tell I'm honest," thought Jerry happily, as he put the heavy bag of groceries in his cart. The grocery slip he took out of the bag and put in his pocket. "I must remember to save all the slips," he thought.

Jerry was almost home when he remembered that his ten-dollar bill was still unbroken. And that he had to have change to give his mother before he could put the eight dollars and twenty-one cents the groceries cost in a safe hiding place. It was Mr. Bartlett's money, Jerry thought. Jerry would just be keeping the money for him until a month was up.

Jerry was reluctant to go back to Bartlett's store and ask to have his bill changed. He was sure Mr. Bartlett would think it odd, after he had charged the groceries.

"I'll have to walk way down to the shopping center," thought Jerry. Thinking about all the streets he would have to cross, with the trouble of getting the heavy cart up and down the curbs, Jerry was not so sure that starting a charge account had been such a good idea after all. He had a feeling that in a way he might have played sort of an April Fool joke on himself. But it was too late now to undo what he had done. He would feel like a ninny going back and telling Mr. Bartlett that he had decided to pay cash, that he had changed his mind about opening a charge account for the Martin family.

"I'll get my bill changed at the A & P," Jerry decided. And went so fast in that direction that the bag holding the potatoes fell out of the cart and broke and Jerry lost two of them down a sewer. After that he went more slowly, though he found it hard to make the heavy cart go downhill slowly. It made his arms ache holding it back.