Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/28

 mounted the wood-pile. There he made a great pretense of throwing down fresh fuel for his energy. When he heard a stove-door slam shut he knew that his moment had come, and stepped quickly from the wood-pile to the neighboring fence-top, and then dropped quietly into the back alley.

Once he had thus crossed his Rubicon, his entire manner took on a sudden transformation, and at Piggie Brennan's repeated declaration that it ought to be mighty fine fishing weather again, he gave vent to a vigorous and abandoned can-can, quite belying the exhausted muscles of the buck-saw laborer. Two lots further down the alley they discovered Billie Steiner blithely raking up the back yard, wrapt in the happiness of innocent content. They peered in at him, over the fence-top, silently, and with impassive faces. But the tongue of Billie, the unconscious artist, was out, and it worked contemplatively back and forth with every stroke of his rake. An audible snicker broke from the two boys, as they dropped down out of sight.

"Say, Billie, c'm' on fishin'!"

"Heh!" said the startled.