"Oh, of course not!" laughed Mother. "I want you to go to school and become a smart man! Time enough to stay home when you get the measles!"
Now, of course, this did not suit that boy at all. When he went to bed he was thinking and thinking of some plan by which he could stay home from school. For there was to be a hard lesson next day, and, though I am sorry to say it, that boy was too lazy to study as he ought.
"If I could only break out with the measles I could stay home," he kept saying over and over again as he lay in bed. Every now and then he would get up, turn on the electric light in his room and look at himself in the glass to see if any red spots were coming. But he could see none.
"What's the matter, Boysie?" his mother called to him from her room. "Why are you so restless?"
"Maybe I'm getting the measles," he hopefully answered.
"Nonsense! Go to sleep!" laughed Daddy.
Finally the boy did go to sleep, but either he dreamed it, or the idea came to him in the night, for, early in the morning, he awakened and, slipping on his bath robe, went into his sister's room.
"Hey, Sis!" he whispered. "Where's your box of paints?"
"What you want 'em for?" asked Sister.
"Oh, I—I'm going to paint something," mumbled the boy. Sister was too sleepy—for it was only early morning as yet—to wonder much about it, so she told her brother where to find the paints, and then she turned over and went to sleep again.