forgetting in her excitement that Harold was still standing there,
gazing curiously at her. 'You here yet? I thought you had gone!' she
said, half angrily, as she recovered herself a little and met the boy's
wondering eyes.

'Yes'm; but you ain't going to give the party up?' he said, afraid of
losing his half-dollar.

'Of course not. How can I, with all the people invited?' she asked,
questioningly, and a little less sharply.

'I don't know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell 'em not to
come,' Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his fifty cents as
easily that way as any other.

But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been thought of, she
could not now abandon it, and declining the services of Harold and his
pony, she again bade him go home, with a charge that he should be on
time in the evening, adding, as she surveyed him critically:

'If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of Tom's. You are
about his size.'

'Thank you; I have my meetin' clothes, and do not want Tom's,' was
Harold's reply, as he walked away, thinking he would go in rags before
he would wear anything which belonged to his enemy, Tom Tracy.

The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a most unhappy frame
of mind, and she was glad when, at an hour earlier than she had reason
to expect him, her husband came home.