"Why did it have to be pleasant all week and then rain on Saturday?" thought Jerry unhappily the following Saturday. He watched the rain slant against the front windows for a while and then picked up the morning paper to reread the comics. "April showers may bring May flowers, but it's tough on baseball," he said to himself.

Andy came in the living room. He had a much folded and unfolded sheet of paper in his hand. "Help me learn my piece, will you, Jerry? I can read pictures but not hard words. But I know most of my piece. Cathy teached me."

Andy was to make his first public appearance at the P. T. A. meeting Monday evening. His kindergarten class was to perform a short play about Goldilocks and the three bears. Once a year the Oakhurst elementary school put on a program by the pupils for the parents. This year Cathy was to sing in a girls' chorus and Jerry, one of a rhythm band, was to shake bells during the playing of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa. Andy had an important part on the program. He was to speak a poem to introduce the play about Goldilocks. Miss Prouty, his teacher, called it the prologue. Andy called it his log piece.

Jerry took the grimy piece of paper. "Let's hear it," he told Andy. "Shoot."

Andy stood with his legs far apart, his head tilted upward as if he were reading his "piece" from the ceiling. His usually merry face looked solemn, his dark eyes worried. Hardly above a whisper he recited:

"How could your class write a play when you don't even know how to write?" asked Jerry.

"I can print all my name," said Andy in his normal voice. "Miss Prouty says that part of writing is thinking and saying. So she read 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' to us three times. Then our class said it to her and she wrote it down. But she wrote my log piece by herself."

"You'd better say the first verse again and a lot louder," Jerry suggested. "Nobody will hear you if you don't speak good and loud."

So Andy said the first verse again good and loud. He made the phrase "Just for the P. T. A." sound like a football yell.

"Good! That ought to wow 'em. Now say the next verse."

Again Andy's eyes sought the ceiling.

Andy could not remember what came next.

"Belonging to a bear," Jerry prompted. "I don't remember that the story said anything about Papa Bear owning the woods, but maybe he did. Go on, Andy."

Andy could not remember any of the last verse, so Jerry read it to him slowly.

"Say it, Andy," urged Jerry.

Andy pouted. "I don't want to. I hate my log piece," he said fiercely. "I wanted to be the great big bear. I wanted to say, 'Who's been eating my porridge?' I can talk the loudest. But Ned Brooks is going to be the great big bear." Andy's lower lip quivered. He looked ready to bawl.

"Want to hear some keen poetry?" asked Jerry, hoping to cheer Andy.

Andy showed no sign of wanting to but Jerry did not wait for encouragement. With a lilt of enjoyment in his voice he said a rhyme he had learned sometime—he could not remember when or where.

The last two lines Jerry said very rapidly, coming out good and strong on the word sandbank.

Like April weather Andy's stormy face turned sunny. "Say it again," he said delightedly.

Jerry obliged.

"Say it again," Andy begged when Jerry had finished the second time.

"Say, what do you think I am, a phonograph record?" asked Jerry. But he good-naturedly recited the rhyme a third time.

"I can say it," cried Andy. And he recited the rhyme without forgetting a word.

"Say, you can learn like a shot when you really want to," said Jerry admiringly.

"I don't think that's a nice poem to teach to Andy," said Cathy, who had come in and listened to her small brother.

"I'd like to know why not?" asked Jerry.

"Poetry should be beautiful," said Cathy dreamily. "Like that poem Miss Kitteridge read us day before yesterday.

"Life has loveliness to sell," quoted Cathy.

"Blah! That stinks," said Jerry. "But I liked it when Miss Kitteridge read us 'Casey at the Bat.' That's good poetry."

"Not as good as poetry by Sara Teasdale."

"It is, too."

"It is not."

"There's no law that says that everybody has to like the same kind of poetry," said Mrs. Martin from the doorway. "You twins don't have to show dispositions to match the weather. Just because it's unpleasant you don't need to be. I want you to run to the store, Jerry, and get two pounds or a little over of haddock. I had intended to have cold roast beef for dinner but it's such a chilly day I think a good New England fish chowder will just hit the spot."

"But I went to the store this morning," protested Jerry.

"And you took time enough getting home with them to have grown the vegetables and slaughtered the meat."

Jerry looked at the floor. "I'll go," he said in a dull voice as if the burden of life was heavy.

With leaden feet Jerry went out to the garage for his bike. He had a five-dollar bill in his mother's coin purse and he was worrying about how he was going to get it changed. Every time his mother had asked him to go to the store all week Jerry had worried about getting the right change. This morning had been the worst. He had had to take his cart again and that had slowed him up. Then when he had walked in the rain all the long way to the shopping centre, George, the barber, had not been a bit obliging.

George had been busy when Jerry had come in the barbershop. Nor did he look up when Jerry spoke to him, giving him a pleasant "Good morning." Of course Jerry had waited until George was not busy before asking him for change for a ten. Jerry needed only forty cents to take back to his mother this time. George had been very reluctant to change Jerry's bill.

"You're getting to be a nuisance, running in to get bills changed," George had complained. But he had given Jerry nine dollars in bills and a dollar in change for his ten.

Jerry dreaded to have to ask George for change twice the same day. He had never had to do that before. But where else could he get change? All the way to the store he worried.

Jerry was the only customer in Bartlett's store. And Mr. Bartlett did have some nice haddock. Jerry had hoped he would be out of fish but no such luck.

"Nasty day," said Mr. Bartlett, as he weighed the fish.

Jerry agreed. It seemed to him to be a particularly nasty day. He put the grocery slip in his pocket and hurried out of the store. Even the sight of the candy in the showcase had not lifted his spirits. The half pound of candy he might get when he paid the bill at the end of the month seemed a small reward for all he was going through to earn it. "Only three weeks to go," he told himself, putting the package of fish in his bicycle basket. But three weeks seemed a long time.

Maybe it hadn't been a good idea, this charging business. But it was no good time to stop now. He would have no candy to present to his parents to prove the advantage of charging groceries at Bartlett's. No, having begun, Jerry had to see it through.

"Might as well get killed for a sheep as a lamb," Jerry thought, riding through a puddle on his way to the shopping center. It was a remark he had heard his father make, and seemed somehow appropriate.

Jerry had to wait and wait before George would notice him.

"Don't tell me you've come again for change!" George cried. "I won't give it to you."

"Please, just this one time," Jerry pleaded. "I have to have it. Honest."

Grumbling, George went to the cash register and changed the bill. Then he took Jerry firmly by the shoulder. "Out you go and stay out. I don't want to see hide nor hair of you again until you need your next haircut. Understand?"

Jerry understood. He realized that getting bills changed at the barbershop was over.

Jerry was not his usual buoyant self over the weekend. His mother thought he might be getting a cold and gave him vitamin pills and made him drink extra orange juice. She knew something was troubling him but could not get out of him what it was. Jerry shut a door of communication between them. He found it lonely, having to be on his guard against blurting out his secret.

At a little after seven on Monday evening, the whole Martin family piled in the car to go to the P. T. A. meeting. It was unusual for the children to go to a P. T. A. but not for Mr. and Mrs. Martin. Jerry and Cathy insisted that their parents go to the meetings, for a count was made and the class represented by the most parents got an award. Now that Andy was in kindergarten both parents stood up when the count was for Miss Prouty's room. And Mr. and Mrs. Martin stood up to be counted twice for the sixth grade.

All the Martins but Andy took seats near the front of the auditorium. He had to go immediately behind scenes on the stage, since the play he was to be in was to come first on the program. That was in order to allow the parents of the kindergartners to take them home early if they so wished.

Andy had looked a bit pale when he left his family.

"I hope he's not so excited he'll throw up," Cathy said worriedly. "He looks pretty scared."

"Scared? Andy scared? Of course he's not scared," said Jerry stoutly, though he knew very well that Andy really was scared and was only defending him.

"Anyway, he knows his piece," said Cathy. "He said it over to me three times before dinner and didn't make a mistake."

Before the curtain went up, Miss Kurtz, the principal, made a short speech about giving parents an opportunity to share in the school activities of their children. She spoke about the importance of creativity, a long word Jerry did not quite understand, but thought meant making up things. Then the curtain rose and there was the bears' house. Only it didn't have any upstairs. Goldilocks wasn't there yet but the porridge was on the table in a big, a medium, and a tiny bowl. And here came Andy, walking stiffly to the front of the stage. He looked very small.

Jerry saw that his father and mother looked anxious, as anxious as Jerry felt. "Come on, Andy. Say it and get it over with," Jerry muttered.

"Sh-sh," said Cathy.

The audience looked at Andy and Andy looked at them. Seconds passed. Andy did not utter a word.

From behind scenes Miss Prouty prompted him.

"We welcome you, dear parents," she said in a voice barely audible to the audience.

Andy's lips did not move. His face looked frozen in fright. He just stood there.

Miss Prouty prompted him again. Still Andy did not open his mouth. Some boy near the back of the hall clapped. That sound seemed to wake Andy from his trance of fear. He raised his head and gave the audience a large, beaming smile. Then Andy spoke his piece.

Andy spoke up nice and loud and then made a bow. Apparently he did not realize that he had spoken the wrong piece.

The auditorium suddenly rocked with laughter. Miss Prouty shooed Andy off the stage and apologized for him. Then she spoke the "Dear parents" poem herself.

Cathy just had time to whisper angrily to Jerry, "It's all your fault—you taught him that awful rhyme," before Andy came to sit with his family. He did not seem at all upset and apparently enjoyed the program, though he yawned a few times before it was over.

Everybody said it had been a good program. In the car going home, Mr. Martin said he could hear Cathy's voice above the other girls', sweet as a bird. And Mrs. Martin said that Jerry had rung his bells exactly on time and very nicely. They carefully avoided mentioning anything about Andy's piece.

They were just getting out of the car when Andy broke into loud wails of extreme sorrow.

"I said the wrong piece," he sobbed. "I said the wrong piece and everybody laughed at me."

"Never you mind, son. Folks enjoy a good laugh," said Mr. Martin.

"There, there!" Andy's mother soothed him. "We all make mistakes. He's getting a delayed reaction," she told the others. "And it's long past his bedtime."

Jerry really felt sorry for Andy. "Tell you what, Andy, I promise I'll take you to the zoo next Saturday. You'll like that, won't you?"

"I don't want to see the loud animals. I want to go see the quiet ones," said Andy, sniffing though his sobs had ceased.

"Okay, I'll take you to the Museum of Natural History," agreed Jerry, understanding that by "loud" Andy meant alive and by "quiet" he meant stuffed animals.

"Ned Brooks hollered so loud my ears hurt. He sounded like this. 'Who's been eating my porridge?'" Andy bellowed the words so loud that his mother put her hands over her ears.

"Sometimes I think I would prefer quiet children," she said.

Andy began speaking for Baby Bear, his voice tiny. He was in high spirits again. Jerry wished that all his fret and worry about the charge account and getting change could disappear as easily as Andy's sorrow. During the P. T. A. meeting Jerry had pushed his worries to the background of his thoughts. Now he found them right up front again. The next time his mother sent him to the store, where was he to go to get change now that George the barber had failed him?

The family drank hot chocolate and ate cookies in the kitchen before going to bed. The half-melted marshmallows on top gave Andy a white mustache before his mother wiped his face with a napkin. He got in her lap and snuggled against her while she sipped her chocolate. When you were little like Andy you were easily forgiven for almost anything, Jerry thought, his conscience troubled about the charge account.

Jerry was finishing his second cup of hot chocolate when an easy solution to the change problem dawned on him. He had made several trips to the store this week and each time put away Mr. Bartlett's money in bills and small change. There must be money enough up attic in that white shoe to change a five and probably a ten. Yes, Jerry was sure he could change a ten. "I can make my own change," he thought happily. And suddenly the charge account seemed a good scheme again.

"You look mighty pleased with yourself, Jerry," said his mother.

"I just thought of something."

"What?" asked Cathy.

"I'll tell you sometime," Jerry promised.

"Why does Jerry have to act so darned mysterious lately?" Cathy complained to her mother.

"A boy has a right to keep a few things to himself," said Mrs. Martin.

Jerry was grateful to his mother for taking his part. "When I get that candy from Bartlett's," he thought, "I won't forget that I've promised the first piece to Andy. But my mother will get the next piece."

Jerry thought of his mother reaching in the box for a pink mint and smiled.

"You're up to something. I can tell it by the way you look," remarked Cathy.

He would have to be on his guard against Cathy, Jerry realized. Up till now he had found it almost impossible to keep a secret from his twin sister.

"Want me to wipe away your tears?" he jibed. It seemed mean to say something on purpose to make Cathy mad but that would take her mind off being curious.