Once through with football, Sidney went as enthusiastically into hockey, mourning the period of inactivity that must elapse before Jack Frost took possession of the world and froze the ponds and streams. Sidney fulfilled his promise to show Tom how to use a hockey stick that winter, for the High School Athletic Association built by popular subscription a rink on a piece of vacant ground across the street from the school. Tom’s instruction usually took place at lunch hour, when the surface was so congested that real skating or hockey was out of the question. Tom learned quickly and Sidney declared flatteringly that he could make the team if he had the time for it. Christmas came and went. It was a very busy season for Tom and the sporting goods department did a wonderful business. A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of there being as many sweaters in the world as Cummings and Wright sold that year in the holidays! Tom had had a factory turn out a brown coat-sweater with a broad blue band around the middle, and those went like hot cakes. The first of the new year Tom moved from Mrs. Cleary’s to a larger and more comfortable room on Turner Street. In many ways he was sorry to leave, as sorry, perhaps, as the Clearys were to have him. But his new abode was much nearer the store and the school, the house was a better one, and his new room well furnished. Besides, he could get his meals under the same roof, which was an advantage. To be sure, it was going to cost him well over a dollar more to live each week, but now he was receiving his full wages of five dollars, for the pump had at last been fully paid for and he held Cummings and Wright’s bill-of-sale for it. He meant in the spring to take formal possession of it and have it brought to town and stored in the basement of the store, where, perhaps, it might find a purchaser. At Christmas his employers had presented him with a five-dollar gold-piece and Uncle Israel had given him the same amount, although it was in greasy one- and two-dollar bills instead of shining metal. So, on the whole, he felt quite affluent as he took possession of his new room.