“I saw it open this morning.”
“I will look about.”
Will went into the wood-shed, and there before the door he saw two cats licking their chops, and their guilty eyes seemed to him to say, “Rabbit stew for breakfast! Keep dark!”
“Charlie,” said Will, entering the house again, “I think two cats out there took your rabbit, and we will catch them and box them and exhibit them.”
“As my maginary?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you how to label them.”
The cats were caught and boxed, and this was the label their cage bore on the second and last evening of the “Helping Hand Sale:” “Destroyers of the Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam.” This device took, and many pennies were put by the neighbors into Charlie’s hands. When the boys summed up the profits of the sale, they had for Tim Tyler’s benefit the sum of thirty dollars, which Mr. Walton promised should be judiciously expended.
“It all shows,” remarked Miss Barry to the club, “what we can do when we work in earnest, and also how much small sums amount to.”
Simes Badger’s comment on the affair was that Aunt Stanshy had shown herself a Christian, “knowin’ as I do,” said Simes, “the story of the Tyler affair way back.”
Mr. Walton and his old mother had something also to say about the sale, and it was in connection with one of Tony’s Italian pictures that Mr. Walton bought.