"Doad!" cried Addison, giving her a pat on the shoulder. "You are the boss girl of this county!" "Oh, I wanted to hear all the Fourth o' July news," said Theodora. "Now tell me. But don't talk so loud, or you will wake Gramp and Gram." "The news, well, jingo, I don't know whether we ought to tell it all, or not; what think?" said Addison to me, doubtfully. "Has Halse got home?" I asked. "Yes, he came just before supper. He said he rode up _with a fellow_ as far as the forks of the road," replied Theodora. "Did he say why he left us and came home so early?" asked Addison. "Yes; he said there was nothing going on, and he had got tired of loafing around." Addison laughed; so did I. "But I knew there was something behind it all," Theodora continued. "Now what was it?" "Nothing--much," replied Addison, evasively. "Oh, but there was," exclaimed Theodora. "Tell me." "Nothing but the usual 'circus,' when Halse goes out anywhere," replied Addison wearily, yet still laughing a little. "But tell me what it was," Theodora urged. With a certain reluctance which boys always feel, to divulge circumstances that pertain mainly to boys and boys' affairs, we related to her the salient events of the afternoon, for it would have been a bad return for her kindness to us to have refused altogether, and we felt, too, that her motive was something more than mere curiosity. Theodora was a fun-loving girl by nature; she laughed over the snap-cracker episodes, and laughed, indeed, at the Elm House roof exploit, and even could not help laughing at Alfred and Halse's final trick with Enoch's clothes. "But that _was_ mean," she kept saying. "What do you suppose he will do? Will he have them arrested?" "No, I guess not," replied Addison. "I think it will pass as a joke. Enoch will probably get his clothes back, in a day or two, if not his boots." "But he declared he would give Alf and Halse an awful licking the first time he meets them out anywheres," I said. "Well, I shouldn't much blame him, I do say, if he did," observed Theodora, laughing again. "I would if I were he," said Addison. "You see, they begun on Enoch in the first place." Just then we heard a little creaking noise in the chamber stairway. "Sh," whispered Theodora. "I believe Halse is there, on the stairs, listening." "Well, listeners rarely hear much good of themselves," said Addison, loudly enough for him to hear it. We heard still another little creaking noise, this time higher up the stairs, as if he were tiptoeing back to his room. "I am sorry if he overheard us," Theodora remarked in a low tone, as we got up to go to our rooms. "I don't care," said Addison. "What could he expect any one to say of a mean thing like that?" When I entered our room, Halse was in bed, and pretended to snore. "Oh, that's too thin, Halse," said I. "We heard you on the stairs." "You are a couple of tell-tales!" he exclaimed, hotly. "To come home and chatter out everything that happened, to the girls!"