[Illustration: _When Mr. Pennington's eyes fell on Bud, he leaned on a
show-case and laughed till he shook all over_.]
"Say, Bud, how you goin' to get home?" asked Abe.
Bud grinned as he looked at his rags.
"Gee," said Mealy, "I'm glad it ain't me."
"Aw, shucks," returned Bud, and he thought of the stricken Ananias in
the Sunday-school lesson leaf as he spoke; "run right through like I
always do. What I got to be 'fraid of?"
"Yes, Mr. Bud, you can laugh, but you know you'll catch it when you
get home."
This shaft from Jimmy Sears put in words the terror in Bud's heart.
But he replied: "I'll bet you I don't."
Bud's instinct piloted him by a circuitous route up the alley to the
kitchen door. Miss Morgan sat on the front porch, waiting for the boy
to return before serving supper. He stood helplessly in the kitchen
for a minute, with a weight of indecision upon him. He feared to go
to the front porch, where Miss Morgan was. He feared to stay in the
kitchen. But when he saw the empty wood-box a light seemed to dawn.
Instinct guided him to the woodpile, and the law of self-preservation
filled his arms with wood, and instinct carried him to the kitchen
wood-box time and again, and laid the wood in the box as gently as if
it had been glass and as softly as if it had been velvet. Not until
the pile had grown far above the wainscoting on the kitchen wall, did
a stick crashing to the floor tell Miss Morgan that Bud was in the
house.
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