“What?” asked John Murchison, and again took out his pipe, as if this were the first he had heard of the matter.

“Give us our fifteen cents each to celebrate with.  You can’t do it under that,” Oliver added firmly.  “Crackers are eight cents a packet this year, the small size.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr Murchison.  The reply was definite and final, and its ambiguity was merely due to the fact that their father disliked giving a plump refusal.  “Nonsense” was easier to say, if not to hear than “No.”  Oliver considered for a moment, drew Abby to colloquy by the pump, and sought his brother behind the woodpile.  Then he returned to the charge.

“Look here, Father,” he said, “Cash down, we’ll take ten.”

John Murchison was a man of few words, but they were usually impregnated with meaning, especially in anger.  “No more of this,” he said.  “Celebrate fiddlesticks!  Go and make yourselves of some use.  You’ll get nothing from me, for I haven’t got it.”  So saying, he went through the kitchen with a step that forbade him to be followed.  His eldest son, arriving over the backyard fence in a state of heat, was just in time to hear him.  Lorne’s apprehension of the situation was instant, and his face fell, but the depression plainly covered such splendid spirits that his brother asked resentfully, “Well, what’s the matter with you?”

“Matter?  Oh, not much.  I’m going to see the Cayugas beat the Wanderers, that’s all; an’ Abe Mackinnon’s mother said he could ask me to come back to tea with them.  Can I, Mother?”

“There’s no objection that I know of,” said Mrs Murchison, shaking her apron free of stray potato-parings, “but you won’t get money for the lacrosse match or anything else from your father today, I can assure you.  They didn’t do five dollars worth of business at the store all day yesterday, and he’s as cross as two sticks.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”  Lorne jingled his pocket and Oliver took a fascinated step toward him.  “I made thirty cents this morning, delivering papers for Fisher.  His boy’s sick.  I did the North Ward—­took me over’n hour.  Guess I can go all right, can’t I?”

“Why, yes, I suppose you can,” said his mother.  The others were dumb.  Oliver hunched his shoulders and kicked at the nearest thing that had paint on it.  Abby clung to the pump handle and sobbed aloud.  Lorne looked gloomily about him and went out.  Making once more for the back fence, he encountered Alexander in the recognized family retreat.  “Oh, my goodness!” he said, and stopped.  In a very few minutes he was back in the kitchen, followed sheepishly by Alexander, whose grimy face expressed the hope that beat behind his little waistcoat.

“Say, you kids,” he announced, “Alec’s got four cents, an’ he says he’ll join up.  This family’s going to celebrate all right.  Come on down town.”

No one could say that the Murchisons were demonstrative.  They said nothing, but they got their hats.  Mrs Murchison looked up from her occupation.