"I stopped on the way for a few minutes."

"You did?" exploded Abner Adams. "Where?"

"Teddy Tucker and I stopped to read a circus bill over there on
Clover Street. We did not stop but a few minutes. Was there any
harm in that?"

"Harm? Circus bill--"

"And I want to go to the circus, too, Uncle, when it comes here.
You know? I have not been to anything of that sort since mother
died--not once. I'll work and earn the money. I can go in the
evening after my work is finished. Please let me go, Uncle."

For a full minute Abner Adams was too overcome with his emotions
to speak. He hobbled about in a circle, smiting the ground with
his cane, alternately brandishing it threateningly in the air
over the head of the unflinching Phil.

"Circus!" he shouted. "I might have known it! I might have
known it! You and that Tucker boy are two of a kind. You'll
both come to some bad ending. Only fools and questionable
characters go to such places--"

"My mother and father went, and they always took me," replied the
boy, drawing himself up with dignity. "You certainly do not
include them in either of the two classes you have named?"

"So much the worse for them! So much the worse for them. They