things she saw gleaming faintly through the garden's darkness, was
the missing evening paper that Harry had thrown into a pepper tree
near the side fence. During Miss Stratton's absence, the strong wind
had shaken the paper down, and it lay at the foot of the tree. "How
did he suppose I was going to find that paper up that tree?"
questioned Miss Stratton. "I did look up there before dark, but I
didn't see anything."

The evening paper was easily discoverable for a week or so after
this: Then matters went back to their old state and Miss Stratton
frequently spent a quarter of an hour finding her evening paper.

"If he'd take the slightest pains he could throw it on this walk
that is ten feet wide!" she would tell herself indignantly, as she
pushed aside the branches of blue marguerites and the leaves of
calla-lilies, and peered into holes on either side of the steps near
the front gate, where the watering of the garden had washed away the
soil.

Miss Stratton had liked Harry very much, when he first became paper
boy. He had a frank manner that made him friends. At first he
carefully threw the paper on Miss Stratton's front piazza. He never
skipped an evening, as the former paper boy had sometimes done, and
Miss Stratton rejoiced that at last a paper boy who was reliable had
been found for the route. Months had passed, and while Harry was as
careful at some houses as before, Miss Stratton's was not among that
number. Harry had three 'customers on that street and he nightly
walked only as far toward Miss Stratton's as would enable him to
throw her paper and then, with two or three steps, throw another
paper to the neighbor diagonally across the street. A few more steps