bone in your body, and hers too. The hussy!"

"Oh, you will, will you?"

Ma, who had been making countless trips from the kitchen to the back
garden with water pail and sprinkling can sagging from either arm, put
in a word to stay the threatening storm. "Now, Pa! Now, Ernie!" The two
men subsided into bristling silence.

Suddenly, "There she is again!" shrilled Minnie, from her bedroom. Buzz
shrank back in his chair. Old man Werner, with a muttered oath, went to
the open doorway and stood there, puffing savage little spurts of smoke
streetward. The Kearney girl stared brazenly at him as she strolled
slowly by, a slim and sinister figure. Old man Werner watched her until
she passed out of sight.

"You go gettin' mixed up with dirt like that," threatened he, "and I'll
learn you. She'll be hangin' around the mill yet, the brass-faced thing.
If I hear of it I'll get the foreman to put her off the place. You'll
stay home to-night. Carry a pail of water for your ma once."

"Carry it yourself."

Buzz, with a wary eye up the street, slouched out to the front porch,
into the twilight of the warm May evening. Charley Lembke, from his
porch across the street, called to him: "Goin' down town?"

"Yeh, I guess so."

"Ain't you afraid of bein' pinched?" Buzz turned his head quickly