“It’s as good as getting the valedictory,” said Joe Stone.

“And that is entering into any college in the land without an examination,” said Peter Crane.

Now Peter had run shoulder to shoulder with Fred and it does him great credit that, being beaten, he was thoroughly good-natured about it.

“I say, Fred, you ought to treat for this;” and Noah Holmes, standing on tiptoe, looked over the heads of the other boys significantly at Fred.

“I wish I could; but here’s all the money I’ve got,” said Fred, taking about twenty-five cents from his pocket—­all that was left of his monthly allowance.

“That’s better than nothing.  It will buy an apple apiece.  Come on!  Let’s go down to old Granger’s.  I saw some apples there big as your head; and bigger, too,” said Noah, with a droll wink.

“Well, come on, then;” and away went the boys at Fred’s heels, pushing and shouting, laughing and frolicking, until they came to Abel Granger’s little grocery.

“Now hush up, you fellows,” said Noah, turning round upon them.  “Let Fred go in by himself.  Old Grange can’t abide a crowd and noise.  It will make him cross, and all we shall get will be the specked and worm-eaten ones.  Come, fall back, there!”

Very quietly and obediently the boys, who always knew their leader, fell back, and Fred went into the little dark grocery alone.

He was so pleasant and gentlemanly that, let him go where he would and do what he would, in some mysterious way he always found the right side of people and got what he wanted, in the most satisfactory manner.

Now Abel Granger was “as cross as a meat axe.”  Noah said, and all the boys were afraid of him.  If the apples had been anywhere else they would have been much surer of their treat; but in spite of their fears, back came Fred in a few moments, with a heaping measure of nice red apples—­apples that made the boys’ mouths water.

Fred said that old Abel had given him as near a smile as could come to his yellow, wrinkled face.

“Treat ’em,” he said, “treat ’em, eh?  Wal, now, ’pears likely they’d eat you out of house and home.  I never see a boy yet that couldn’t go through a tenpenny nail, easy as not.”

“We are always hungry, I believe,” said Fred.

“Allers, allers—­that’s a fact,” picking out the best apples as he spoke and heaping up the measure.  “There, now if you’ll find a better lot than that, for the money, you are welcome to it, that’s all.”

“Couldn’t do it.  Thank you very much,” said Fred.

As the boys took the apples eagerly and began to bite them, they saw the old face looking out of the dirty panes of window glass upon them.

Fred loved to make everybody happy around him, and this treating was only second best to leading his class; so when, at the corner of the street turning to his father’s house, he parted from his young companions, I doubt whether there was a happier boy in all Andrewsville.