Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/98

The Loom of Destiny point always to save his little delicacies until such meetings, since he had discovered that the hungry eyes of another boy could give to his sugary prize an extraneous and quite intangible sweetness.

It was one afternoon when Russell had stolen out through the coach-house to a vacant lot they had appointed as a rendezvous, and was helping Snapsie make a bonfire of a piece of cheese-box and an apple barrel, that he, watching the Ward boy rapturously making away with his third cocoanut caramel, asked him if he ever got the stomach-ache?

"Naw!" said Snapsie, wiping his mouth with his coat sleeve, "on'y onct—las' Chris'mus!"

"At Christmas!" said Russell. "It must have been fun."

"Well, I guess! There was a blokie wid a jag on took me into a swell hash-house and says, 'Now, little lean guts, order anyt'ing yer wants.' Did n't I order up de grub, though!"

Snapsie's eyes saddened with the memory of it all. 86