"Sure. There won't be many of the fellows around to-night, anyway.
Peter here will stay all evening and lock up—if Mr. Haley don't come.
Won't you, Pete?"
"Sure," was the reply.
"Then I'll go along with you," declared Marty, who wasn't half as ashamed to escort a girl on the street nowadays as he had been a few months before.
Now, Janice had intended running over to Hopewell Drugg's store and looking at the paper Marty had tried to destroy. She did not for a moment suspect what was in it, or why her cousin had told her a falsehood about it. But she saw she would have to defer the examination of the news-sheet.
"All right. Come along, Marty," she agreed, with assumed carelessness.
The boy was very moody. He stole glances at her only when he thought she was not looking. Never had Janice seen the hobbledehoy act so strangely!
They plowed through the increasing snow up Hillside Avenue, and the snow fell so rapidly that the girl was really glad she had come home. She entered first, Marty staying out on the porch a long time, stamping and scraping his boots.
When he came in he still had nothing to say. He pulled his seat to the far side of the glowing stove and sat there, hands in his pockets and chin on his breast.
"What's the matter with you, Marty?" shrilled Mrs. Day. "You ain't sick, be ye?"
"Nop," growled her son.