"You want to get a move on, Mother Wit!" cried the youngest girl of the troop, saucy looking, and with ruddy cheeks and flyaway curls. This was Clara Hargrew, whom her friends called Bobby, and whose father kept the big grocery store just a block away from the Belding jewelry store. "Everybody will have picked over the presents in all the stores and got the best of everything before we get there." "That's right," said the last member of the group; and this was a short and sturdy boy who had the same mischievous twinkle in his eye that Bobby Hargrew displayed. His name was Long, and because he was short, everybody at Central High (save the teachers, of course) called him "Short and Long." He and Bobby Hargrew were what hopeless grown folk called "a team!" When they were not hatching up some ridiculous trick together, they were separately in mischief. "But you say Short and Long has done some of his Christmas shopping already," Jess Morse, the tall visitor, said. "Just think, Laura! He has sent Purt Sweet his annual present." "So soon?" said Laura Belding, but with her mind scarcely on what her friends were saying. "And Thanksgiving is only just passed!" "I thought I'd better be early," said Short and Long, with solemn countenance. "I wrote 'Not to be opened till Christmas' upon the package." Bobby and Jess and Lance burst into giggles. "Let's have the joke!" demanded Chet. "What did you send the poor fish, Short?" "You guessed it! You guessed it, Chet Belding!" cried Bobby. "Aren't you a clever lad?" "What do you mean?" asked Laura, now becoming more seriously interested. "Why," Jess Morse said, "he got a codfish down at the market and wrapped it up in a lot of paper and put it in a long, beautifully decorated Christmas box. If Purt Sweet keeps that box without opening it until Christmas, I am afraid the Board of Health will be making inquiries about the Sweet premises." "You scamp!" exclaimed Laura sternly, to Short and Long. "He's all right!" declared Bobby warmly. "You know just how mean and stingy Purt Sweet is--and his mother has more money than anybody else in Centerport. Last Christmas, d'you know what Purt did?" "Something silly, of course," Laura said. "I don't know what you call silly. I call it mean," declared the smaller girl. "Purt got it noised abroad that he was going to give a present to every fellow in his class--didn't he, Short?" "That's what he did," said Billy Long, taking up the story. "And the day before Christmas he got us all over to his house and offered each of us a drink of ice-water! And some of the kids had been foolish enough to buy him things--and give 'em to him ahead of time, too!" "Serves you right for being so piggish," commented Chet. "It was a mean trick," agreed Laura, "for some of the boys in Purt's grade are much younger than he is. But this idea of giving Christmas presents because you expect something in return----"