"Why, they'll be dumpin' their ol' smelly brine in the creek from now until next winter!... And jus' when we'd got the hole to ourselves, too!"
CHAPTER XXVI
SUBE GOES TO THE MOVIES
Vacation vanished. School opened. Another year of education loomed up before Sube like an impassable mountain. The weather began to give hints of an approaching winter. Except on rare occasions the evenings were spent indoors. These occasions were usually devoted to attendance at the opera where the Kings and Queens of Filmdom could be seen for the trifling sum of five cents or the one-half part of a dime.
And always—with one exception—these evenings at the movies were the result of earnest solicitation on the part of the boys. The exception was noted on a certain Friday evening when Mrs. Cane had planned to open her parlors for a lecture of the Mothers' Club.
As the Cane family was about to rise from the supper table on that memorable evening, Mrs. Cane announced that she had arranged a pleasant surprise for the boys. Whereupon she distributed largess to the extent of a nickel apiece and told them that as an experiment she had decided to permit them to go just this once unattended to the Theatorium.
If she had let them remain at home they would have paid scant attention to the Mothers' Club; but the moment she showed a desire to be rid of their presence she aroused Sube's suspicions.
"What don't you want us round home for?" he asked as he pocketed his nickel.
"Oh, it isn't that I don't want you here, dears," she replied; "but I knew this dry old lecture wouldn't interest you at all."