Having to drag a heavy cart with a big bag of groceries in it nearly a mile to the shopping center became considerable of a chore even before Jerry was halfway there.

"Lemme see," he thought as he bumped the cart down a curb. "I know I have to put away eight dollars and twenty-one cents for Mr. Bartlett. How much is that from ten dollars? That's the right change for Mummy."

Jerry had a pained look on his face as he tried to do the subtraction in his head. He was never any good in mental arithmetic. Give him a pencil in his hand and he could do pretty well at figuring. But his mind seemed to go blank when he had to carry and all that in his head. He reached in all his pockets but did not have a pencil. And he knew he had to ask for the right change.

Just then Jerry saw Carl Weston coming up the street. He was a classmate of Jerry's in the sixth grade. He wore thick-lensed glasses and was quite a brain. He'd be almost sure to have a pencil or a ballpoint pen. But Jerry asked him and he didn't, so Jerry gave him a line about being a whiz at arithmetic and said he bet Carl could say right off how much money you'd have left if you subtracted eight dollars and twenty-one cents from ten dollars.

For a few seconds Jerry saw a human adding-machine at work. Then Carl said, "One dollar and seventy-nine cents, of course." He didn't add "Stupid," but he looked as if that were what he was thinking. Jerry didn't care. He knew a lot of important things Carl didn't know, such as baseball averages and who were the home-run kings for the past five years.

"Thanks, Carl. See you." And Jerry hurried off before Carl could ask just why he wanted to know the answer to that particular sum in subtraction. "One dollar and seventy-nine cents," Jerry kept saying to himself so he wouldn't forget.

There were long lines of shoppers at the checking-out counters at the A & P. Jerry had left his cart outside the store, thinking it not tactful to bring in a big bag of groceries he had bought in another store. He took his place in what he thought was the shortest line. Some woman had forgotten to have her bag of bananas weighed and that held up the line. The next woman wanted to cash a check and that had to be okayed by the manager. Jerry fidgeted. He saw that the woman ahead of the woman ahead of him had a cart so piled with groceries that she must be feeding a boardinghouse, or an awfully big family.

It was all of fifteen minutes, but seemed twice as long, before Jerry reached the clerk behind the counter and asked for change.

"Sorry, but I'm short of change," said the young man behind the counter.

A wave of discouragement swept over Jerry. Perhaps storekeepers wouldn't give change to anybody who wasn't buying anything. But he had to get his ten-dollar bill changed. He didn't have the heart to wait in another line to see if another clerk might give him change. He went out. He would have to try another store.

He opened the door of the florist shop and backed out. The woman in charge there looked just too elegant to approach. At the hardware store he was told that he could have two fives for a ten if that would help him. It wouldn't, so Jerry still had his ten-dollar bill unchanged.

Here was the barbershop. One particular barber usually cut Jerry's hair. Jerry was glad to find that George was not busy.

"Thought I gave you a haircut less than a week ago," George greeted him. "Did you come in to get your head shaved? Be cooler, warm weather coming on."

Jerry explained that he was satisfied with the state of his crew cut. Rather timidly he asked to have his ten-dollar bill changed, told the exact change he had to have.

"Guess I can oblige you, but Saturday's a bad day for change, with the banks closed all day," said George. He went to the cash register and counted out the change Jerry needed.

"Thank you," said Jerry with great heartiness.

Now to get home in a hurry. He went out to get his cart, which he had left outside the barbershop. A big red setter dog was pawing the bag of groceries. "Red! Get away from there!" Jerry yelled. With horror he saw that the dog had the leg of lamb in his strong jaws.

"Drop that, Red!" shouted Jerry. He ran and grabbed the other end of the leg of lamb and tried to get it away from the dog.

Red was a good-natured animal who often seemed to forget he was a dog, he so much wanted to be one of the boys. He especially enjoyed taking part in baseball games. He ran bases and barked as loud as any of the players could shout. Last Saturday Jerry might have made a home run if Red had not dashed in front of him so Jerry fell over him. Now Red thought a tug of war with a leg of lamb was a fine game.

Jerry pulled. The red setter braced his legs and pulled.

"You mean dog! Leggo! Leggo!" screamed Jerry.

The desperation in his voice finally had an effect on Red's tender heart. He let go of his end of the leg of lamb so suddenly that Jerry sat down hard. The leg of lamb fell in the dirt.

Jerry brushed off bits of gravel from his Sunday dinner. Red's teeth marks didn't show unless you looked very closely. Jerry wrapped the leg of lamb in the torn paper bag. It was a lucky thing he had come out of the barbershop before Red had run off with it. "That dog is getting to be a nuisance," he thought. But he really liked Red and had often wished he were one of the Martin family instead of belonging to a neighbor.

It was uphill most of the way home. Jerry got pretty tired of pulling his heavy cart. He wished he could think up a way of motorizing it, fix it up like sort of a four-wheeled motor scooter. Maybe put an engine on the back like an outboard motor. Such speculations helped pass the time, but he was tired before he got home.

It was disappointing to find that the doughnuts had been fried and put away. And Mrs. Martin, dressed for town, scolded Jerry soundly for being over an hour going to the store.

"I had to postpone making my cake," she said sharply, "for if Cathy and I are to get any shopping done and get back in time for lunch, we have to start. You'll have to look after Andy. Take him with you but keep an eye on him if you go out with the boys."

"Other boys don't have to have their little brothers tagging along," complained Jerry.

"Don't try my patience too far or you won't go out at all."

Jerry saw a look in his mother's eyes that made him wary of making her any more displeased with him than she already was.

"All right, I'll take him. If Red follows us to the park Andy can play with him and keep that big nuisance from trying to play ball with us."

Jerry was relieved when his mother unpacked the groceries and did not notice that anything unusual had happened to the leg of lamb.

"Where's my change?" she asked.

Jerry almost got out Mr. Bartlett's eight dollars and twenty-one cents. Hastily he switched his hand to another pocket for the one dollar and seventy-nine cents due his mother. He handed it over, his eyes downcast. For some reason he did not want to meet his mother's eye just then. Whenever she looked him straight in the eye, Jerry had always found it next to impossible to keep anything from her.

"Thank you for going to the store for me. But honestly, Jerry, you're too old for me to have to tell you every time not to stop and play on the way home," she said.

Play! So that was what she thought he had been doing. Little did she know how little like play it was. Jerry had to stifle the impulse to tell her all he had been through in the past hour and a half.

"Saturday's a busy time at the grocery stores," he said.

His mother let that pass for an excuse. She was in a hurry to be off. And Jerry could tell that his twin sister was pleased with his being stuck with looking after Andy while she was off admiring herself in store mirrors.

"Don't let Andy lose his windbreaker," she warned in an almost grownup manner. Trying to button her jacket and hold on to her red patent leather handbag at the same time, she dropped the bag and its contents spilled on the floor.

With horror Jerry saw that Cathy had been carrying a lipstick of shiny gold-colored metal. "Don't tell me you've taken to using lipstick! You trying to look like a clown?"

"It's just from the dime store. To use if my lips get chapped. Take your foot off that, Jerry Martin. Oh, you've bent it," she cried.

"Want me to wipe away your tears?" taunted Jerry. That was his latest favorite remark. He said it whether it was appropriate or not, liking the sound of it and the reaction it drew from family and playmates. Now Cathy tossed her head and glared at him.

"I was sorry that Andy broke your model satellite but now I'm not."

"Who cares?"

"Make Jerry stop being so aggravating," Cathy begged her mother.

"Come on. We haven't time to try to reform your brother this morning. Be a good boy, Andy. Mind Jerry. Don't let your little brother out of your sight, Jerry."

Jerry was relieved when his mother and sister had gone. It gave him a chance to find a good hiding place for Mr. Bartlett's eight dollars and twenty-one cents. Somewhere up attic would be the best place, he decided.

"You play with your blocks. I have to go up attic for a minute," Jerry told Andy.

"I'll go with you."

"No, you don't."

It took several minutes to get Andy so interested in his toys that he consented to be left while Jerry went up attic. Then he dashed up two flights of stairs. Now where should he hide the money? In the drawer of that old chest? No, his mother was forever cleaning out drawers. In one of the garment bags in which were hung out-of-season clothes? That might do. He would need the hiding place only for the month of April—before warm weather. Because it was a cool day it seemed to Jerry that it would be ages before anybody needed summer clothes. He put Mr. Bartlett's money in one of his mother's shoes, a white one he found in the bottom of one of the garment bags.

Jerry felt that he had been engaged in quite an enterprise. "And I've not gone to all this work just for myself," he argued in his mind as he zipped up the garment bag. "I'm doing it for the whole family. For I'm not going to hog the candy for myself. Course I may help myself to a piece or two when I get it. No, I'll bring the whole box home and pass it around," he decided generously. "And if Dad is convinced, and that box of free candy should convince him that it is a good thing to charge groceries at Bartlett's, we'll go on charging them. Every month. At the end of a year I bet we'll have gotten more than five pounds of free candy. Oh, boy!"

Small footsteps sounded and there was Andy.

"Downstairs was lonesome," he said plaintively.

"Okay, I'm all through with what I was doing up here. I'll get my bat and ball and we'll go out."

"I'll play ball with you."

"Tell you what you can do, Andy. I'll let you hold my catcher's mitt when I'm not using it. And I'll throw you a few easy ones. You're old enough to begin to learn to play baseball."

Andy looked so pleased that Jerry's heart warmed to him. He decided that when Mr. Bartlett presented that box of candy, Andy should have the first pick.

"He can have his choice of any piece in the box," thought Jerry benevolently. And waited quite patiently while Andy came down the stairs slowly all the way like a grownup and not two feet on the same step like a baby. Sometimes Jerry did not mind having Andy tag along as much as he made out.