"Well, I guess the trouble is he can't be depended on. He'd be peddling the stock all over the State, or putting it up for doubtful transactions, and I guess the directors wouldn't like that. He's a reckless sort. I shouldn't mind his fits of crankiness, if he would only leave girls out. But when he goes in for some kind of mischief harmless in itself, he invariably brings some girl into it, and she has to suffer in the scrape with him. It's not right of Sid. But--speaking of angels--there he is now." Jack's runabout, called the Get There, had been climbing the hill back of the Whirlwind, and both machines were now on a level stretch of road and approaching Fisher's store--an "emporium," as the sign called it, and a place where one could get anything from a watch to a shoestring, if old Jared Fisher only knew that it was wanted before he went to town. It so happened, however, by some strange intervention of providence, that he never did know in time. But, at any rate, you could always get soda water--the kind that comes in the "push-in-the-cork bottles," and that was something. As the two autos drew up, the occupants beheld, standing on the steps of the store, Sidney Wilcox and Ida Giles. Jack halted his car behind the Whirlwind. "Hello there!" called out Ed. "Seems to me I'm bound to meet all my friends to-day. How are you, Sid?" Ed leaped from Jack's car and up the steps to greet Sid. "Oh, I'm so-so," was the rather drawling answer. "But what's the matter with you? Been clamming?" "Not exactly," replied Ed, glancing down at the mud spots; "but I caught something, just the same." "So I see," responded Sid, chuckling at his wit. "Pity to take it all, though. You should have left some for the turtles. They like mud." Jack, who followed Ed, said something in conventional greeting to Ida. But the girl with Sid never turned her head to look in the direction of the Whirlwind. Cora remarked on this in a low voice to Isabel and Elizabeth. "I hear that you are going in for--er--Wall Street," said Sid to Ed in rather a sarcastic voice. "Oh, no. Nothing like that. No chance for a lamb like me in Wall Street. It's too much of a losing game." "Oh, I don't know," drawled Sid. "A fellow might make good, and then do--well, better." Ed glanced at Jack. How did Sid know about Ed's plan to take stock in the new bank? That was a question that each youth flashed to the other. There was something unpleasant in the manner of Sidney Wilcox. All in the party seemed to feel it. And as far as the girls were concerned, they noticed much of the same manner in Ida, though Jack and Ed were not quite so critical. As for Walter, he did not seem to be giving Ida a thought. But it is doubtful if she was so indifferent toward him. Still, she would not look in his direction while Cora and her two chums were with him. Corn walked slowly up the broad store steps; Bess and Belle following.