"Make an offer?" asked Tad, with an eye to business.
"Yes."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five dollars."
"W-h-e-w! He must be crazy. All right, he can have her so far as I am concerned. I'll go over to see him this evening."
That night Tad Butler came home with twenty-five dollars in his pocket, which, added to what he already had earned, made the tidy sum of forty dollars—a little fortune for him.
He dropped the handful of bills into his mother's lap, and, going out to the porch, sat down with his head in his hands, to think. Mrs. Butler followed him after a few moments.
"Do you think you would like to go with the boys on their jaunt this summer?" she asked, innocently enough, it seemed.
"Yes, but I can't."
"Why not, my boy?"