told you--went around into the little office and looked over Laura's
shoulder.

"What's gone wrong, Laura?" he asked, with sympathy in his voice and
manner.

"You want to get a move on, Mother Wit!" cried the youngest girl of the
troop, saucy looking, and with ruddy cheeks and flyaway curls. This was
Clara Hargrew, whom her friends called Bobby, and whose father kept the big
grocery store just a block away from the Belding jewelry store. "Everybody
will have picked over the presents in all the stores and got the best of
everything before we get there."

"That's right," said the last member of the group; and this was a short and
sturdy boy who had the same mischievous twinkle in his eye that Bobby
Hargrew displayed.

His name was Long, and because he was short, everybody at Central High
(save the teachers, of course) called him "Short and Long." He and Bobby
Hargrew were what hopeless grown folk called "a team!" When they were not
hatching up some ridiculous trick together, they were separately in
mischief.

"But you say Short and Long has done some of his Christmas shopping
already," Jess Morse, the tall visitor, said. "Just think, Laura! He has
sent Purt Sweet his annual present."

"So soon?" said Laura Belding, but with her mind scarcely on what her
friends were saying. "And Thanksgiving is only just passed!"