“Just about,” said the postman; “and I knew this street when there were three families in every house, and the walls that black with dirt, you could write your name on ’em in chalk. But these millionaire artists discovered it. Nuts, I call ’em, with their glass studios on the roof and their Packard cars that have to back out whenever the ice truck comes through.” Wendell felt that they were wandering from the point. “But did you ever see an acorn here?” he asked. “Nope,” said the postman. “No acorns here. They named it that, I guess, because it isn’t big enough to be named for a full-grown tree like Walnut or Chestnut. Peanut Street _I_’d call it.” “Well, I’ve got to get to school,” said Wendell. He jogged down the short but precipitous length of treeless Acorn Street, and so on to school. After school, as he started for home, the Public Garden tempted him, and he turned in from Beacon Street. It was a warm October day, and the Garden wore an air of resuscitated midsummer. He sat down on a bench on the Charles Street side, facing the lake, which looked very attractive, although it was no longer bright with the little boating parties and slow-gliding swan-boats of summer. A flock of doves, seeing Wendell settled to stay, fluttered down all around him for expected crumbs; and some busy little sparrows, who are always more alert than the doves and capture twice as much food, hopped along the path. Wendell felt in his pockets for stray provender, but without results. A gray squirrel, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, loped through the rustling leaves, and ran up the bench that Wendell occupied. He had a very busy air as of one who stops for a moment only, in the midst of pressing engagements. A slight inadvertent movement of Wendell’s sent him scurrying down again. He frisked through the dead leaves, dug up something of interest from among them and sat up on his hind legs to handle it. Wendell saw that it was an acorn and noticed that he was sitting under a young oak. “Pity they couldn’t plant a few of them where they belong,” he said bitterly. After the squirrel’s desertion, he sat there a few minutes longer, but the pigeons, too, soon found that he had no picnic to offer them and flew off in a flock to a small girl with bare knees, accompanied by a French-bonneted nurse, who had a whole bag of popcorn. He got up, then, and, kicking the leaves before him, shuffled out to the wide entrance at Charles and Beacon Streets.