Project Gutenberg's Jerry's Charge Account, by Hazel Hutchins Wilson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Jerry's Charge Account Author: Hazel Hutchins Wilson Illustrator: Charles Geer Release Date: November 26, 2008 [EBook #27211] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JERRY'S CHARGE ACCOUNT *** Produced by Greg Weeks, Diane Monico, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (cover) JERRY'S CHARGE ACCOUNT by Hazel Wilson Jerry Martin asked for it. If the candy in Mr. Bartlett's store hadn't looked so good to him, he wouldn't have started the charge account and he would have escaped all that worry and trouble. The worst thing about it was that it was sort of fun, too. It was fun keeping his twin sister Cathy guessing, fun trying to keep his secret from the family, especially his little brother Andy. So Jerry kept getting deeper and deeper into his predicament, like a man in quicksand. The plain fact was, Jerry's father didn't approve of charge accounts, and Jerry wasn't likely to change his mind for him, candy or no candy. Then, when somebody broke into Mr. Bullfinch's house next door, the trouble became serious. There is laughter and suspense, and a hidden lesson in this story of an impulsive boy and his true-to- life family. Illustrated by Charles Geer BOOKS BY HAZEL WILSON The Surprise of Their Lives Tall Ships The Red Dory Jerry's Charge Account Jerry's Charge Account JERRY'S CHARGE ACCOUNT by Hazel Wilson with illustrations by Charles Geer LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY BOSTON · TORONTO COPYRIGHT, ©, 1960, BY HAZEL WILSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW TO BE PRINTED IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 60-5877 FOURTH PRINTING Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [Transcriber's Note: Project Gutenberg was not able to find a U. S. copyright renewal.] This book is affectionately dedicated to Gregory and Kevin Contents 1 Charge It, Please 3 2 Change for a Ten-Dollar Bill 18 3 P. T. A. Meeting 29 4 No Safe Hiding Place 44 5 New Neighbors 56 6 "The Stars and Stripes Forever" 66 7 Working on Andy 81 8 The Auction 93 9 As Good as a Watchdog 107 10 May Day 125 11 Welcome Home! 138 Jerry's Charge Account 1 Charge It, Please Jerry tried to be quiet, but he bumped into the one chair in the kitchen on his way to the kitchen cupboard. And it was not his fault that the cream pitcher fell when he took the sugarbowl from the shelf. Jerry made a quick and nice southpaw catch. Pretty good, he thought, for a right-hander. He hadn't been able to use his right because it was holding the sugarbowl. He had dumped the sugar into a cereal dish and was busily pouring salt into the sugarbowl when his mother entered the kitchen. "What on earth are you doing up so early on Saturday?" Mrs. Martin asked sleepily. "It's only half-past six." Jerry's blue eyes begged his mother to share a joke with him. "I woke up and remembered it's April Fools' Day," he said and chuckled. "Can't you just see Dad's face when he tastes his coffee with two spoonfuls of salt in it instead of sugar?" "No, Jerry," said his mother. "No. It wouldn't be at all funny to spoil your father's morning coffee. It would be tragic. Put the salt back, rinse out the sugarbowl, and refill it with sugar. And no more April-fooling with your father's breakfast." "Aw, I never can have any fun around here," Jerry complained. Salt spilled on the floor when he poured it from the sugarbowl back into the spout of the salt box. "Sweep it up," ordered his mother, and Jerry had to get out the brush and dustpan. When he went to the sink to rinse the sugarbowl, Jerry turned on the hot water so hard that he had to draw his hand back quickly or it would have been scalded. The sugarbowl fell in the sink and broke. [Pg 3] [Pg 4] "Oh, dear! I need cast-iron dishes instead of china if you're to handle them," scolded Mrs. Martin. "It just slipped out of my hands. I can mend it. That new glue I bought last week will mend china, glass, wood— anything. It says so on the tube." Jerry looked so sorry for having broken the sugarbowl that his mother stopped being cross. "It was cracked anyway," she said consolingly. "Now go get dressed. As long as you're up you may as well stay up. Maybe I can get a little work out of you since you've got such an early start on the day." Jerry groaned. What a dreary word—work! Just hearing it made him feel tired. "I'll have pancakes ready in fifteen minutes," said his mother brightly. "With real maple syrup," she added. Jerry could tell that she was tempting his appetite so he would not be tempted to go back to bed again. He did not mind. He was wide awake. It would be a novelty to have breakfast so early on a Saturday. Almost an April Fool joke on his mother. "And to think that last Saturday I could hardly get you out of bed at ten," said his mother as he left the kitchen. At a little before nine Jerry had a broom in his hand. His orders were to sweep off the front steps. He went at it in a very leisurely manner. The sooner he finished the sooner his mother might give him some other chore to do. Even though Laura, the pleasant three-times-a-week maid, did most of the cleaning, Mrs. Martin believed her children should have a few household chores. Cathy, Jerry's twin sister, had to do the breakfast dishes on Saturdays, and even five-year-old Andy, the youngest member of the Martin family, was supposed to empty the wastebaskets. Jerry's lazy broom finished the top step and began on the second. Then it occurred to him that it had been some time since he had investigated what was under the steps. He put down his broom while he knelt and applied one eye to one of the holes bored in the steps. The hole was big enough so if somebody dropped a dime just right it would go through. No dimes down there today. As Jerry got to his feet he looked with approval at the big white clapboarded house where he lived. The morning sun made the small-paned windows shine. The Martin house was on the very edge of northwest Washington, D. C. It had been one of the original farmhouses when that part of Washington had been country, not city. Now there were houses all around, and it had been remodeled long before the Martins had bought it. Jerry's father and mother were proud of the old floorboards and wide fireplaces. Jerry especially liked the house because it had an attic and a big garage that had been a barn. As he picked up his broom again, his twin sister came to the door to shake a dustcloth. Also, he was sure, to check up on what he was doing. "Cathy!" cried Jerry. "There's a great big spider crawling up your left leg." Cathy did not let a yip out of her. "You can't April-fool me that easy," she said in a superior-sounding way that irritated Jerry. Lately he and his twin often irritated each other. For one thing Cathy had recently developed an intense interest in how she looked, which seemed silly to Jerry. "Better wipe that black off your left cheek," he said, and laughed when Cathy raised her hand to her cheek. "April Fool! Got you that time," he exulted. "Think you're smart, don't you?" grumbled Cathy. "Half the time you don't even notice it when your face is dirty. To say nothing of your ears." Jerry swushed dirt off a step and changed the subject. "Have you fooled anybody yet this morning?" he asked. [Pg 5] [Pg 6] [Pg 7] "Just Andy. I asked him if he knew that Bibsy had grown another head during the night, and he almost cried when he found I was April-fooling him. He said he had always wanted a two-headed cat. Then when I asked him if he had seen the alligator under the dining room table, he wouldn't look. He just said, 'What's a nalligator?' I told him it was like Mummy's handbag only much, much bigger, and he wants to see a real one. Mummy says we must take him to the zoo someday soon. But I can't remember seeing an alligator there, can you?" Cathy tossed her head, giving her pony tail a little exercise. "Too bad you didn't say seal instead of alligator. There are seals at the zoo. Say, I wouldn't mind going to the zoo this forenoon. Even if we have to take Andy. Want to?" "Nope. Mummy's taking me to town to buy a new dress for Easter." Cathy's eyes were bright with expectation. It was beyond Jerry why Cathy should be pleased to waste good playing time in town buying a dress. She didn't used to be that way. She used to complain bitterly about having to change from blue jeans into a dress. She still liked wearing jeans, yet there came a shine in her eyes at even the mention of buying a new dress. Mummy said that eleven-going-on- twelve was getting to be a young lady. "Rats!" thought Jerry. It was silly for Cathy to begin to be young-lady-like when she could throw a baseball just about as well as a boy and sometimes better. "Jerry!" called his mother from a front window. "I want you to run to the store for me. Right away." "Can't Cathy go?" Jerry really did not mind running (though he usually walked or rode his bike to the store) but it was a matter of principle with him to make a try at getting out of work. "I have other things for Cathy to do," said Mrs. Martin and shut the window. There were two steps still unswept but Jerry left them untouched by his lazy broom. After all, how could he be expected to do two things at once? He wished, not for the first time, that his mother would do her grocery shopping at the supermarket, which was far enough away so she would have to take the car. Instead, she mostly traded at Bartlett's, a small old-fashioned store three blocks from where the Martin family lived. "There aren't many small grocery stores left and since we have one right in the neighborhood I like to patronize it," Jerry had heard his mother say. She liked stores where the owner came to wait on you. But Jerry suspected that one reason she traded at Bartlett's was because she thought it was good for a boy to run errands. Going to the store was Jerry's chief chore. "Just because her grandfather had to chop wood and milk cows before breakfast when he was a boy, she thinks she should keep me busy," he grumbled to himself as he went in the house. "Why do I have to go to the store? Bartlett delivers. Why can't she telephone her order and have it delivered?" [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] He knew that the answer to that was more than his mother's desire to keep him busy. It was partly because she did not like to plan meals ahead. A brisk cold day might make her feel like having pork chops and hot applesauce for dinner. Or for a warm day, a platter of cold cuts and deviled eggs. "It's just the day for calves' liver and bacon," she might say when Jerry got home from school in the afternoon. And she would send him to the store for a pound and a half of fresh calves' liver cut thin, "the way Mr. Bartlett knows I like it." A meal, his mother thought, should match her mood or the weather. She kept a few frozen vegetables on hand in case of need, but she much preferred fresh vegetables, freshly cut steaks and chops—fresh almost anything which could be bought fresh. "I know it's a frozen food age but I still prefer my meat and vegetables fresh," Mrs. Martin often said. That meant a lot of trips to the store. Too many, Jerry thought. Especially on Saturdays, when she needed a lot of things. His mother was in the kitchen mixing dough for doughnuts. Jerry was glad she made doughnuts instead of buying bakery ones. How good doughnuts tasted hot out of the fat! He wished a few of them were done so he could have two or three to eat on his way to the store. "Want me to fry 'em for you and then go to the store?" he offered. "No. I need a carton of sour cream right away for my chocolate cake. And, let me see—five pounds of Idaho potatoes, two pounds of ground round steak—I feel like having meat loaf tonight—and two acorn squash, an avocado, a dozen oranges, and one loaf of white bread and one of whole wheat. Oh, and I've already telephoned and told Mr. Bartlett that you would be in to pick up a leg of lamb. He has spring lamb just in. You'll have to take your cart. There'll be too much for you to carry in your bicycle basket." Jerry had felt lately that he was too old to be dragging home a cart filled with groceries. "How long will it be before Andy can take that old cart to the store? He can have it to keep any old time he'll take it to the store after groceries." "You've only had it a year. Said you would be sure to use it for years. And you know Andy isn't nearly old enough to take a big cart out of the yard. Now run along. And don't stop to play on the way home." Jerry got his cart out of the garage. The wheels squeaked but that didn't bother him. He met a couple of boys in his grade at school on his way to the store and arranged for baseball later. Bartlett's store was on a street zoned only for houses, yet because the store had been there before the zoning law was passed it had been allowed to remain. The present proprietor was the third generation of Bartletts who had sold groceries there. He was a stout, pink-faced man, quite bald in front. Jerry said that Mr. Bartlett's forehead went way to the back of his head. When Jerry went in the store, Mr. Bartlett was waiting on a tall woman with a blue scarf over her head, and Bill, the clerk who put up orders, was tossing groceries into cartons, each carton for a customer. Jerry had to wait while the woman with the blue scarf decided what she would have for Sunday dinner. It seemed to take her a long time to make up her mind. After trying without much success to engage Bill in conversation, Jerry stood in front of the candy showcase next to the cash register and wished he had money with him besides the ten-dollar bill his mother had given him to pay for the groceries. My, but the candy looked yummy! There were glass trays of round mints, pink, white, green, and yellow. And caramels, chocolate-covered nuts, coconut bonbons, chocolate nougats—nothing there Jerry didn't like. He looked at the candy yearningly. Now the lady had decided on a sirloin steak, thank goodness. Another customer came in but Jerry would be next to be waited on. He would speak right up and say he was next if Mr. Bartlett started to wait on somebody else first, he decided. The lady wearing the blue scarf reached into her handbag and got out her billfold. "I want to pay my March grocery bill," she said. She stood beside Jerry near the cash register while Mr. Bartlett was behind the counter giving her change. "Don't go off without your little bonus," said Mr. Bartlett. "My daddy and my granddaddy before him always gave folks a little bonus when they paid their bills." Jerry saw Mr. Bartlett get out a half-pound pasteboard box. Saw him reach in the showcase and bring out enough candy to fill two rows in the box. Jerry had heard that Mr. Bartlett gave candy to charge customers when they paid their bills, but he had never before been in the store and seen it happen. The sight saddened him. For he knew that never for him would Mr. Bartlett fill a half-pound box of candy as a gift. The Martin family never charged groceries. They never charged anything. Mr. Martin believed in paying cash for everything. Even for a new car. He was funny that way. Jerry had never much minded until this minute when he saw a charge customer rewarded for being a charge customer. "Wish we had a charge account. I wouldn't have to worry about losing money on the way home, if we did," thought Jerry, remembering the tendency of loose change to fall out of his pocket when he jumped over hedges. "Besides, Mr. Bartlett must want people to have charge accounts or he wouldn't give them a bonus when they pay their bills. Stands to reason. He likes to have folks charge their groceries instead of paying cash, so a charge account must be a good thing. [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] Wish my father thought so. If he were here and saw Mr. Bartlett hand over that free candy, he'd be bound to see it pays to charge your groceries." "Now, young man, what can I do for you?" asked Mr. Bartlett. Jerry had been thinking so hard about the advantages of having a charge account that he had hard work remembering what his mother had sent him to the store for. But he managed to recollect all but the avocado. Jerry didn't like avocados so it was easy for him to forget that. It was while Mr. Bartlett was counting out a dozen oranges that Jerry had what he considered a very bright idea. There was a way he could convince his father that Bartlett's store was the one place where it didn't pay to pay cash. "It won't be dishonest," Jerry argued to himself. "I won't be getting a cent out of it. Only a box of candy at the end of the month. And if we eat an awful lot and the bill is nice and big for April, maybe Mr. Bartlett will give me a pound box of candy instead of a half pound." The plan that had popped into Jerry's mind was this—he would not pay for groceries for the month of April but charge them. He would keep in a safe place the money his mother gave him to pay for them. And the first day of May he would come in with it and pay the bill and be given a box of candy. "When I take the candy home and pass the box to Dad, he'll see it's a good thing to charge our groceries," thought Jerry. The scene was so vivid in his mind that he could almost see his father taking a chocolate-covered almond. "I said that will be eight dollars and twenty-one cents," said Mr. Bartlett, a bit impatiently. Jerry reached in his pocket and got out his mother's coin purse. He preferred carrying money loose in his pocket but she had said he could risk losing his own money that way, not hers. It was while he was opening the purse that he suddenly decided to try out his bright idea. "Charge it, please," he said huskily. "You folks opening a charge account?" asked Mr. Bartlett. "Isn't that all right with you?" "Sure. Sure. You've been trading with me for years. And your father's credit is good as gold, which is more than I can say for some." Mr. Bartlett made out a slip, which he put in the bag of groceries. "He knows me and can tell I'm honest," thought Jerry happily, as he put the heavy bag of groceries in his cart. The grocery slip he took out of the bag and put in his pocket. "I must remember to save all the slips," he thought. Jerry was almost home when he remembered that his ten-dollar bill was still unbroken. And that he had to have change [Pg 15] [Pg 16] to give his mother before he could put the eight dollars and twenty-one cents the groceries cost in a safe hiding place. It was Mr. Bartlett's money, Jerry thought. Jerry would just be keeping the money for him until a month was up. Jerry was reluctant to go back to Bartlett's store and ask to have his bill changed. He was sure Mr. Bartlett would think it odd, after he had charged the groceries. "I'll have to walk way down to the shopping center," thought Jerry. Thinking about all the streets he would have to cross, with the trouble of getting the heavy cart up and down the curbs, Jerry was not so sure that starting a charge account had been such a good idea after all. He had a feeling that in a way he might have played sort of an April Fool joke on himself. But it was too late now to undo what he had done. He would feel like a ninny going back and telling Mr. Bartlett that he had decided to pay cash, that he had changed his mind about opening a charge account for the Martin family. "I'll get my bill changed at the A & P," Jerry decided. And went so fast in that direction that the bag holding the potatoes fell out of the cart and broke and Jerry lost two of them down a sewer. After that he went more slowly, though he found it hard to make the heavy cart go downhill slowly. It made his arms ache holding it back. 2 Change for a Ten-Dollar Bill Having to drag a heavy cart with a big bag of groceries in it nearly a mile to the shopping center became considerable of a chore even before Jerry was halfway there. "Lemme see," he thought as he bumped the cart down a curb. "I know I have to put away eight dollars and twenty-one cents for Mr. Bartlett. How much is that from ten dollars? That's the right change for Mummy." Jerry had a pained look on his face as he tried to do the subtraction in his head. He was never any good in mental arithmetic. Give him a pencil in his hand and he could do pretty well at figuring. But his mind seemed to go blank when he had to carry and all that in his head. He reached in all his pockets but did not have a pencil. And he knew he had to ask for the right change. Just then Jerry saw Carl Weston coming up the street. He was a classmate of Jerry's in the sixth grade. He wore thick- lensed glasses and was quite a brain. He'd be almost sure to have a pencil or a ballpoint pen. But Jerry asked him and he didn't, so Jerry gave him a line about being a whiz at arithmetic and said he bet Carl could say right off how much money you'd have left if you subtracted eight dollars and twenty-one cents from ten dollars. For a few seconds Jerry saw a human adding-machine at work. Then Carl said, "One dollar and seventy-nine cents, of course." He didn't add "Stupid," but he looked as if that were what he was thinking. Jerry didn't care. He knew a lot of important things Carl didn't know, such as baseball averages and who were the home-run kings for the past five years. "Thanks, Carl. See you." And Jerry hurried off before Carl could ask just why he wanted to know the answer to that particular sum in subtraction. "One dollar and seventy-nine cents," Jerry kept saying to himself so he wouldn't forget. There were long lines of shoppers at the checking-out counters at the A & P. Jerry had left his cart outside the store, thinking it not tactful to bring in a big bag of groceries he had bought in another store. He took his place in what he thought was the shortest line. Some woman had forgotten to have her bag of bananas weighed and that held up the line. The next woman wanted to cash a check and that had to be okayed by the manager. Jerry fidgeted. He saw that the woman ahead of the woman ahead of him had a cart so piled with groceries that she must be feeding a boardinghouse, or an awfully big family. It was all of fifteen minutes, but seemed twice as long, before Jerry reached the clerk behind the counter and asked for change. "Sorry, but I'm short of change," said the young man behind the counter. A wave of discouragement swept over Jerry. Perhaps storekeepers wouldn't give change to anybody who wasn't buying anything. But he had to get his ten-dollar bill changed. He didn't have the heart to wait in another line to see if another clerk might give him change. He went out. He would have to try another store. He opened the door of the florist shop and backed out. The woman in charge there looked just too elegant to approach. At the hardware store he was told that he could have two fives for a ten if that would help him. It wouldn't, so Jerry still had his ten-dollar bill unchanged. Here was the barbershop. One particular barber usually cut Jerry's hair. Jerry was glad to find that George was not busy. "Thought I gave you a haircut less than a week ago," George greeted him. "Did you come in to get your head shaved? [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] Be cooler, warm weather coming on." Jerry explained that he was satisfied with the state of his crew cut. Rather timidly he asked to have his ten-dollar bill changed, told the exact change he had to have. "Guess I can oblige you, but Saturday's a bad day for change, with the banks closed all day," said George. He went to the cash register and counted out the change Jerry needed. "Thank you," said Jerry with great heartiness. Now to get home in a hurry. He went out to get his cart, which he had left outside the barbershop. A big red setter dog was pawing the bag of groceries. "Red! Get away from there!" Jerry yelled. With horror he saw that the dog had the leg of lamb in his strong jaws. "Drop that, Red!" shouted Jerry. He ran and grabbed the other end of the leg of lamb and tried to get it away from the dog. Red was a good-natured animal who often seemed to forget he was a dog, he so much wanted to be one of the boys. He especially enjoyed taking part in baseball games. He ran bases and barked as loud as any of the players could shout. Last Saturday Jerry might have made a home run if Red had not dashed in front of him so Jerry fell over him. Now Red thought a tug of war with a leg of lamb was a fine game. Jerry pulled. The red setter braced his legs and pulled. "You mean dog! Leggo! Leggo!" screamed Jerry. The desperation in his voice finally had an effect on Red's tender heart. He let go of his end of the leg of lamb so suddenly that Jerry sat down hard. The leg of lamb fell in the dirt. Jerry brushed off bits of gravel from his Sunday dinner. Red's teeth marks didn't show unless you looked very closely. Jerry wrapped the leg of lamb in the torn paper bag. It was a lucky thing he had come out of the barbershop before Red had run off with it. "That dog is getting to be a nuisance," he thought. But he really liked Red and had often wished he were one of the Martin family instead of belonging to a neighbor. It was uphill most of the way home. Jerry got pretty tired of pulling his heavy cart. He wished he could think up a way of motorizing it, fix it up like sort of a four-wheeled motor scooter. Maybe put an engine on the back like an outboard motor. Such speculations helped pass the time, but he was tired before he got home. It was disappointing to find that the doughnuts had been fried and put away. And Mrs. Martin, dressed for town, [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] scolded Jerry soundly for being over an hour going to the store. "I had to postpone making my cake," she said sharply, "for if Cathy and I are to get any shopping done and get back in time for lunch, we have to start. You'll have to look after Andy. Take him with you but keep an eye on him if you go out with the boys." "Other boys don't have to have their little brothers tagging along," complained Jerry. "Don't try my patience too far or you won't go out at all." Jerry saw a look in his mother's eyes that made him wary of making her any more displeased with him than she already was. "All right, I'll take him. If Red follows us to the park Andy can play with him and keep that big nuisance from trying to play ball with us." Jerry was relieved when his mother unpacked the groceries and did not notice that anything unusual had happened to the leg of lamb. "Where's my change?" she asked. Jerry almost got out Mr. Bartlett's eight dollars and twenty-one cents. Hastily he switched his hand to another pocket for the one dollar and seventy-nine cents due his mother. He handed it over, his eyes downcast. For some reason he did not want to meet his mother's eye just then. Whenever she looked him straight in the eye, Jerry had always found it next to impossible to keep anything from her. "Thank you for going to the store for me. But honestly, Jerry, you're too old for me to have to tell you every time not to stop and play on the way home," she said. Play! So that was what she thought he had been doing. Little did she know how little like play it was. Jerry had to stifle the impulse to tell her all he had been through in the past hour and a half. "Saturday's a busy time at the grocery stores," he said. His mother let that pass for an excuse. She was in a hurry to be off. And Jerry could tell that his twin sister was pleased with his being stuck with looking after Andy while she was off admiring herself in store mirrors. "Don't let Andy lose his windbreaker," she warned in an almost grownup manner. Trying to button her jacket and hold on to her red patent leather handbag at the same time, she dropped the bag and its contents spilled on the floor. With horror Jerry saw that Cathy had been carrying a lipstick of shiny gold-colored metal. "Don't tell me you've taken to using lipstick! You trying to look like a clown?" "It's just from the dime store. To use if my lips get chapped. Take your foot off that, Jerry Martin. Oh, you've bent it," she cried. "Want me to wipe away your tears?" taunted Jerry. That was his latest favorite remark. He said it whether it was appropriate or not, liking the sound of it and the reaction it drew from family and playmates. Now Cathy tossed her head and glared at him. "I was sorry that Andy broke your model satellite but now I'm not." "Who cares?" "Make Jerry stop being so aggravating," Cathy begged her mother. "Come on. We haven't time to try to reform your brother this morning. Be a good boy, Andy. Mind Jerry. Don't let your little brother out of your sight, Jerry." Jerry was relieved when his mother and sister had gone. It gave him a chance to find a good hiding place for Mr. Bartlett's eight dollars and twenty-one cents. Somewhere up attic would be the best place, he decided. "You play with your blocks. I have to go up attic for a minute," Jerry told Andy. "I'll go with you." "No, you don't." It took several minutes to get Andy so interested in his toys that he consented to be left while Jerry went up attic. Then he dashed up two flights of stairs. Now where should he hide the money? In the drawer of that old chest? No, his mother was forever cleaning out drawers. In one of the garment bags in which were hung out-of-season clothes? That might do. He would need the hiding place only for the month of April—before warm weather. Because it was a cool day it seemed to Jerry that it would be ages before anybody needed summer clothes. He put Mr. Bartlett's money in one of his mother's shoes, a white one he found in the bottom of one of the garment bags. [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] Jerry felt that he had been engaged in quite an enterprise. "And I've not gone to all this work just for myself," he argued in his mind as he zipped up the garment bag. "I'm doing it for the whole family. For I'm not going to hog the candy for myself. Course I may help myself to a piece or two when I get it. No, I'll bring the whole box home and pass it around," he decided generously. "And if Dad is convinced, and that box of free candy should convince him that it is a good thing to charge groceries at Bartlett's, we'll go on charging them. Every month. At the end of a year I bet we'll have gotten more than five pounds of free candy. Oh, boy!" Small footsteps sounded and there was Andy. "Downstairs was lonesome," he said plaintively. "Okay, I'm all through with what I was doing up here. I'll get my bat and ball and we'll go out." "I'll play ball with you." "Tell you what you can do, Andy. I'll let you hold my catcher's mitt when I'm not using it. And I'll throw you a few easy ones. You're old enough to begin to learn to play baseball." Andy looked so pleased that Jerry's heart warmed to him. He decided that when Mr. Bartlett presented that box of candy, Andy should have the first pick. "He can have his choice of any piece in the box," thought Jerry benevolently. And waited quite patiently while Andy came down the stairs slowly all the way like a grownup and not two feet on the same step like a baby. Sometimes Jerry did not mind having Andy tag along as much as he made out. 3 P. T. A. Meeting "Why did it have to be pleasant all week and then rain on Saturday?" thought Jerry unhappily the following Saturday. He watched the rain slant against the front windows for a while and then picked up the morning paper to reread the comics. "April showers may bring May flowers, but it's tough on baseball," he said to himself. Andy came in the living room. He had a much folded and unfolded sheet of paper in his hand. "Help me learn my piece, [Pg 28] [Pg 29] will you, Jerry? I can read pictures but not hard words. But I know most of my piece. Cathy teached me." Andy was to make his first public appearance at the P. T. A. meeting Monday evening. His kindergarten class was to perform a short play about Goldilocks and the three bears. Once a year the Oakhurst elementary school put on a program by the pupils for the parents. This year Cathy was to sing in a girls' chorus and Jerry, one of a rhythm band, was to shake bells during the playing of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa. Andy had an important part on the program. He was to speak a poem to introduce the play about Goldilocks. Miss Prouty, his teacher, called it the prologue. Andy called it his log piece. Jerry took the grimy piece of paper. "Let's hear it," he told Andy. "Shoot." Andy stood with his legs far apart, his head tilted upward as if he were reading his "piece" from the ceiling. His usually merry face looked solemn, his dark eyes worried. Hardly above a whisper he recited: We welcome you, dear parents, And hope you'll like our play. 'Twas written by Miss Prouty's class Just for the P. T. A. "How could your class write a play when you don't even know how to write?" asked Jerry. "I can print all my name," said Andy in his normal voice. "Miss Prouty says that part of writing is thinking and saying. So she read 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' to us three times. Then our class said it to her and she wrote it down. But she wrote my log piece by herself." "You'd better say the first verse again and a lot louder," Jerry suggested. "Nobody will hear you if you don't speak good and loud." So Andy said the first verse again good and loud. He made the phrase "Just for the P. T. A." sound like a football yell. "Good! That ought to wow 'em. Now say the next verse." Again Andy's eyes sought the ceiling. You may have heard the story Of this girl with golden hair, Who lost her way in a dark wood— Andy could not remember what came next. "Belonging to a bear," Jerry prompted. "I don't remember that the story said anything about Papa Bear owning the woods, but maybe he did. Go on, Andy." Andy could not remember any of the last verse, so Jerry read it to him slowly. I won't go on with the story, For our play will now portray What happened to little Goldilocks The day she lost her way. "Say it, Andy," urged Jerry. Andy pouted. "I don't want to. I hate my log piece," he said fiercely. "I wanted to be the great big bear. I wanted to say, 'Who's been eating my porridge?' I can talk the loudest. But Ned Brooks is going to be the great big bear." Andy's lower lip quivered. He looked ready to bawl. "Want to hear some keen poetry?" asked Jerry, hoping to cheer Andy. Andy showed no sign of wanting to but Jerry did not wait for encouragement. With a lilt of enjoyment in his voice he said a rhyme he had learned sometime—he could not remember when or where. Gene, Gene—had a machine. Joe, Joe—made it go. Frank, Frank—turned the crank. His mother came out and gave him a spank, And threw him over a sandbank. The last two lines Jerry said very rapidly, coming out good and strong on the word sandbank. Like April weather Andy's stormy face turned sunny. "Say it again," he said delightedly. Jerry obliged. [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] "Say it again," Andy begged when Jerry had finished the second time. "Say, what do you think I am, a phonograph record?" asked Jerry. But he good-naturedly recited the rhyme a third time. "I can say it," cried Andy. And he recited the rhyme without forgetting a word. "Say, you can learn like a shot when you really want to," said Jerry admiringly. "I don't think that's a nice poem to teach to Andy," said Cathy, who had come in and listened to her small brother. "I'd like to know why not?" asked Jerry. "Poetry should be beautiful," said Cathy dreamily. "Like that poem Miss Kitteridge read us day before yesterday. "Life has loveliness to sell," quoted Cathy. "Blah! That stinks," said Jerry. "But I liked it when Miss Kitteridge read us 'Casey at the Bat.' That's good poetry." "Not as good as poetry by Sara Teasdale." "It is, too." "It is not." "There's no law that says that everybody has to like the same kind of poetry," said Mrs. Martin from the doorway. "You twins don't have to show dispositions to match the weather. Just because it's unpleasant you don't need to be. I want you to run to the store, Jerry, and get two pounds or a little over of haddock. I had intended to have cold roast beef for dinner but it's such a chilly day I think a good New England fish chowder will just hit the spot." "But I went to the store this morning," protested Jerry. "And you took time enough getting home with them to have grown the vegetables and slaughtered the meat." Jerry looked at the floor. "I'll go," he said in a dull voice as if the burden of life was heavy. With leaden feet Jerry went out to the garage for his bike. He had a five-dollar bill in his mother's coin purse and he was worrying about how he was going to get it changed. Every time his mother had asked him to go to the store all week Jerry had worried about getting the right change. This morning had been the worst. He had had to take his cart again and that had slowed him up. Then when he had walked in the rain all the long way to the shopping centre, George, the barber, had not been a bit obliging. [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] George had been busy when Jerry had come in the barbershop. Nor did he look up when Jerry spoke to him, giving him a pleasant "Good morning." Of course Jerry had waited until George was not busy before asking him for change for a ten. Jerry needed only forty cents to take back to his mother this time. George had been very reluctant to change Jerry's bill. "You're getting to be a nuisance, running in to get bills changed," George had complained. But he had given Jerry nine dollars in bills and a dollar in change for his ten. Jerry dreaded to have to ask George for change twice the same day. He had never had to do that before. But where else could he get change? All the way to the store he worried. Jerry was the only customer in Bartlett's store. And Mr. Bartlett did have some nice haddock. Jerry had hoped he would be out of fish but no such luck. "Nasty day," said Mr. Bartlett, as he weighed the fish. Jerry agreed. It seemed to him to be a particularly nasty day. He put the grocery slip in his pocket and hurried out of the store. Even the sight of the candy in the showcase had not lifted his spirits. The half pound of candy he might get when he paid the bill at the end of the month seemed a small reward for all he was going through to earn it. "Only three weeks to go," he told himself, putting the package of fish in his bicycle basket. But three weeks seemed a long time. Maybe it hadn't been a good idea, this charging business. But it was no good time to stop now. He would have no candy to present to his parents to prove the advantage of charging groceries at Bartlett's. No, having begun, Jerry had to see it through. "Might as well get killed for a sheep as a lamb," Jerry thought, riding through a puddle on his way to the shopping center. It was a remark he had heard his father make, and seemed somehow appropriate. Jerry had to wait and wait before George would notice him. "Don't tell me you've come again for change!" George cried. "I won't give it to you." "Please, just this one time," Jerry pleaded. "I have to have it. Honest." Grumbling, George went to the cash register and changed the bill. Then he took Jerry firmly by the shoulder. "Out you go and stay out. I don't want to see hide nor hair of you again until you need your next haircut. Understand?" Jerry understood. He realized that getting bills changed at the barbershop was over. [Pg 36] [Pg 37] [Pg 38]