Dumping the money on the table, Teddy was about to scuttle away, when two detaining arms reached out and seized him. “You’re the best boy that ever lived,” quavered the Gobbler. Then Teddy Burke turned redder than his ruddy hair, as his erstwhile enemy, the Gobbler, imprinted a resounding kiss on his freckled cheek.
Wriggling from the grateful embrace, Teddy raced off up the aisle almost at a gallop, muttering, “She got even with me, all right!”
[CHAPTER XXII]
A DISTURBING CONVERSATION
“Who do you s’pose likes me?” asked Teddy Burke that evening, as he and Harry began their homeward walk together.
“Quite a number of persons, I should say,” returned Harry, smiling.
“But this is the last person you’d ever guess. It’s the Gobbler—I mean, Miss Newton. She said I was the best boy that ever lived. What do you think of that?”
“I think you must be dreaming, or else Miss Newton isn’t in her right mind,” jeered Harry. More than once Teddy had recounted to his chum his frequent tilts with the saleswoman he had naughtily named the Gobbler. Harry knew, too, that she had ignored Teddy in the matter of a Christmas gift, and far from being sympathetic had slyly reminded his friend that he could not expect favors from one he had teased and ridiculed.
“She’s not crazy, and I’m not dreaming,” retorted Teddy. “I started to mix up her pie tins after she got ’em counted this morning, to get even with her for Christmas, and——”