Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/105

The Crucible of Character brought his flurried mamma on the scene, who set down his flushed face and his restless movements as incipient scarlatina, and made him hold a clinic thermometer in his mouth to see if he had a temperature. How he loathed and abhorred that thermometer! Then his mother took him on her knee and was about to give him one of his much-beloved "petting-ups," when he broke stubbornly away and fled to the furnace-room.

The result of such extraordinary conduct was that he was straightway put to bed, and kept there through one long, tearful day. It was only after a passionate outburst and a refusal to eat his breakfast that he was allowed to get up on the second morning.

All that day, making a plea of his so-called illness, he hung about the back of the house, listening always for the footsteps of the cook. They seemed never to leave the kitchen. Then he fell to wondering how much chocolate there might possibly be in the red canister.

He could not decide whether to eat it all himself, or share it with Snapsie. He 93