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 back on the bicycle and whistled as he tightened the nuts.

His father went back into the house. "I guess I was a bit rough on him," he said uncomfortably, "but he has been avoiding the place."

Mrs. Quinby's mind dwelt, for an instant, on the evening Bert had been told to stop fooling around the store. She had tried to smooth out the situation then; she said nothing about it now. Instead:

"Why don't you try paying him a dollar a week for making his deliveries?" she asked.

Mr. Quinby turned quickly. "Pay my own son for—"

Her hand fell with soft pressure on his arm. "Not in that spirit—just to make him feel that he has an interest in the business, that he's part of it. When I was a girl dad always gave the boys so much a month for their chores. He said it was part of the farm profits that they had earned. It gave them a feeling that the farm was theirs. Perhaps that is the reason why, with so many country boys going to the city, they have stuck to the old place and made it pay."

"Well," Mr. Quinby said doubtfully, "we'll try it—though there won't be any profits to speak of along Washington Avenue for a while."

Next morning Bert learned of the arrangement. He had a shrewd idea that his mother had had a hand in it; but this thought was swallowed up in