"Didn't come," grunted Marty, and picked up the empty coal hod. "I got to git some coal," he added, and dashed outside into the snow.
Instantly the girl hastened across the room. She jerked the stove door open. There lay the folded paper, just beginning to brown in the heat of the generating gas. She snatched it from the fire and, hearing the outer door opened again, thrust the paper inside her blouse.
It wasn't Marty, but was one of the other boys. She did not understand why her cousin should have told her an untruth about the New York paper. But she did not want an open rupture with him here and now—and before other people.
"I'm going right home," she said to Marty, when he came back with the replenished coal hod. "It's snowing real hard."
"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!