Sid stood around and offered voluble suggestions, but the others fell to work with a will. At the end of a half-hour the dirt floor was brushed free of debris with a thoroughness never attained on maternal cleaning assignments, and the little desk was dragged from its winter shelter of the house to occupy the customary position of state. Red Brown stretched out on the springy, alluring sod near the building. John and Sid, Skinny and Silvey, followed his example. "Isn't this great?" the red-haired one asked blissfully. Sid reverted to the cause for the summons of the clan. "How about the 'Jeffersons'?" he asked. Babel reigned instantly. Silvey was for picking them off, one by one. Red counseled a sudden descent in force upon the home haunts of the enemy. A rear window in the Silvey house creaked upward, and a feminine voice pierced the sun-filled air. "Land's sakes, Bill Silvey, get off that wet ground this minute. You'll catch your death of cold lying there this early in April." The boy sprang to his feet, while his friends grinned sympathetically. "And you, John Fletcher," Mrs. Silvey went on, "you needn't laugh. Your mother won't like it a bit better, if I telephone her. She'll call you home in a minute!" They all rose at this. Truly, modern electrical inventions widen the maternal scope of authority. "Shucks!" said Skinny, as he brushed some dead grass from his coat. "Now she's spoiled it all. What'll we do?" John tossed his battered cap high in the air in a sudden access of spirits. "One for scrub," he shouted. "First raps for the first game of scrub. Go home and get your league ball and bat, Sid. I'll bring my first baseman's glove. Silvey'll find his catcher's mitt. Beat you home! Beat you home!" They were off. Down the cement sidewalk they darted, their quick breaths showing ever so slightly in the crisp air. John stamped up the steps and into the front hall. "Mother!" he called. "Mother!" "Yes, son?" came the voice from the big second floor sewing room. "Where's my baseball glove?" He kicked against the bottom step of the stairway impatiently. "Did you wipe your feet when you came in?" came the disconcerting inquiry. "I don't want the carpets all over mud." "Y-yes." "Go back and wipe them right away. Then come up and tell me what you want." He gave his offending shoes a half-rub against the fiber mat on the porch, and was up by her side in another moment. She looked up from the basket of ragged stockings she was sorting. "Now, what is it?" "My first baseman's glove. The one dad gave me for my birthday. Know where it is?" "Where did you leave it?" "Why, don't you know?" His surprise was genuine. Usually his mother picked up his boyish belongings and stored them in a place of safety. "Is that the glove which laid in the coat closet all last November? the one that I kept telling you to put away before it became lost?"