She smiled in spite of herself. "I asked the little Mosher boy where you were and he said he'd seen you riding off behind Anderson's grocery wagon. What do you think I ought to do to such a disobedient little boy?"
He didn't know. But he wished that he might lay hands on that kid brother of Skinny's. He'd teach him a thing or two about holding his tongue.
"You're getting too big to spank," she commented as he stood silently before her. He nodded a cheerful assent to this.
"So I think you'd better stay in the house this afternoon."
"A-w-w-w, Mother!"
She went into the dining-room where the table had been set for the noonday meal for two, and heaped his plate with potatoes and gravy, while he stood looking miserably out of the window.
The sun's rays were melting the surface of the snow and turning it a dirty gray. Up the street, Perry Alford was winging snowballs at a black, leafless trunk opposite his house. That meant good packing, and snow fights, snow men, and a baker's dozen of other exciting amusements.
To be gated on such an afternoon!
"Come, son!" said Mrs. Fletcher, as he turned away with quivering lip, and drew his chair to the table. "Be a man. Mother's right about it, isn't she?"
He admitted that her sentence was but justice, and attacked the dinner with an appetite which no sorrow could diminish. Then he tramped slowly up to his room and threw himself down on his bed with a book to while away the weary stretch of afternoon confronting him.