his spirit like wine.  He perceived for the first time a perfume from the green plants in his window-box, which seemed to grow before his eyes and give an odor like the breath of a runner.  He heard whole flocks of birds in the sky outside.  He distinguished quite clearly one bird-song which he had never heard before.  His newspaper rustled with astonishing loudness when he turned the pages, his cigar tasted to an extreme which he had never before noticed.  The leaves of the plants and the tree-boughs outside cut the air crisply.  His window-shade rattled so loudly that he could not believe it was simply that.  A great onslaught of the splendid wind filled the room, and everything waved and sprang as if gaining life.  Then suddenly, without the slightest warning, came a shower of the confection known as molasses-peppermints through the door of the office.  They are a small, hard candy, and being thrown with vicious emphasis, they rattled upon the bare floor like bullets.  One even hit Anderson stingingly upon the cheek.  He sprang to his feet and looked out.  Nothing was to be seen except the young clerk, standing, gaping and half frightened, yet with a lurking grin.  Anderson regarded him with amazement.  An idea that he had gone mad flashed through his mind.

“What did you do that for, Sam?” he demanded.

“I didn’t do it.”

“Who did?”

“That kid that was in here last night.  That Carroll boy.  He run in here and flung that candy, and out again, before I could more ‘n’ see him.  Didn’t know what were comin’.”

Anderson returned to his office, and as he crossed the threshold heard a duet of laughter from Sam and the older clerk.  His feet crushed some of the candy as he resumed his seat.  He took up his newspaper, but before he had fairly commenced to read he heard the imperious sound of a girl’s voice outside, a quick step, and a dragging one.

“Come right along!” the girl’s voice ordered.

“You lemme be!” came a sulky boy’s voice in response.

“Not another word!” said the girl’s.  “Come right along!”

Anderson looked up.  Charlotte Carroll was entering, dragging her unwilling little brother after her.

“Come,” said she again.  She did not seem to regard Anderson at all.  She held her brother’s arm with a firm grip of her little, nervous white hand.  “Now,” said she to him, “you pick up every one of those molasses-peppermint drops, every single one.”

The boy wriggled defiantly, but she held to him with wonderful strength.

“Right away,” she repeated, “every single one.”

“Let me go, then,” growled the boy, angrily.  “How can I pick them up when you are holding me this way?”

The girl with a swift motion swung to the office door in the faces of the two clerks, the grinning roundness of the younger, and the half-abstracted bewilderment of the elder.  Then she placed her back against it, and took her hand from her brother’s arm.  “Now, then, pick them up, every one,” said she.