his trousers pocket, displaying them with lofty triumph. "I get a new hat
to-morrow, Miss Stingy."

"Vic, where did you get that money?" Helen May's eyes flamed to the
battle. "Have you been staying out of school and hanging around those
picture studios?"

"Yup--at two dollars per hang," Vic mouthed, spearing a stuffed green
pepper dexterously. "Fifty rehearsals for two one-minute scenes of
honorable college gangs honorably hailing the hee-ro. Waugh! Where'd you
get these things--or did the cat bring it in? Stuffed with laundry soap,
if you ask me. Why don't you try that new place on Spring?"

"Vic Stevenson!" Helen May began in true sisterly disapprobation. "Is
that getting you anywhere in your studies? A few more days out of
school, and--"

Peter's thoughts turned inward. He did not even hear the half playful,
half angry dispute between these two. Vic was a heady youth, much given
to rebelling against the authority of Helen May who bullied or wheedled
as her mood and the emergency might impel, as sisters do the world over.
Peter was thinking of his two hundred dollars saved against disaster; and
a third of that to go for life insurance on the tenth, which was just one
row down on the calendar; and Helen May going the way her mother had
gone--unless she lived out of doors "like an Indian" in Arizona
or--Peter's mind refused to name again the remote, inaccessible places
where Helen May might evade the penalty of being the child of her mother
and of poverty.

Gray hat for Peter or bottle-green hat for Vic--what did it matter if