Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/138

, he might have taken a second and longer look at the sad-eyed urchin who refused, and actually turned away from a circus ticket.

It was wonderful, however, what a hurried though substantial dinner did for Lonely's blighted hopes, broken heart, and altogether wasted life. He slipped out of the back door, wiping the crumbs from his still masticating mouth. There, as he hurried out to feed his new brindled pup, answering to the name of Shivers, and procured through the transfer of a hunting-knife and three shares in his new air-ship when completed, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Lionel Clarence, escaping from the parsonage for one last despairing study of the ever-assuaging and yet ever-inflammatory circus poster, on the back of the Barrisons' barn.

Lonely reimprisoned Shivers under the inverted baby-carriage body, where he was forced to make his new home pending the growth of those stronger ties which were to bind him equally to Homer and Gilead. Then the boy cut after the escaping Preacher's son.

Lionel Clarence, when the other boy joined him, was shaking his head with gloomy cynicism over the highly-colored panorama.