Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/155

 It was a good two hours later, when Lonely was in the midst of his regular Saturday morning task of washing down the bake-shop windows, that the entire town gang hove in sight, jingling the earliest pocket-money of the season after assisting, at the rate of a penny a box, in gathering the first harvest from Old Sam Kettlewell's strawberry patches.

The usual spirit of abandon, peculiar to such occasions, did not hang over the scattered little berry-stained crowd as it drifted nearer the bakery. They drew up on the opposite side of the street, outwardly impassive, yet doubly ominous because of this seeming unconcern.

Although some of the younger boys showed signs of yielding to the eternal allurement of the little show-window, they were promptly and mutteringly restrained by their elders, who ranged themselves along the sidewalk and continued to stare impassively at the New Boy. And the New Boy, to the careless eye, still seemed absorbed in washing down his window-panes. Yet none of the signs and portents from over the way were lost on Lonely, whose heart, if the truth must be told, was almost in his mouth, while his knees more and more