"Hooray!" he shouted in delight, "now that Fatty's going to get it."
But he was wrong. Fatty was too plump to hit a ball so hard. It was Dicky Means that had done it. And, like Fatty, he was always up to tricks, only usually Fatty planned them and Dicky did them.
Yes, it was Dicky Means who had hit that ball right through Mis' Miller's window, the big parlor window, too, and she expected the Methodist ladies of the Laborforlovesociety that very afternoon. There was Mis' Miller now, running out of the house and shrieking,--
"You younglimbosatan, you'll pay for that!"
"Pleeze, Mis' Miller, I haven't any money," Dicky was saying, very politely, with his eye on the broom she held in her hand, "I'll pay you tomorrow."
"No, you'll settle it now," she told him--very cross she was, too, "or I'll tell your mother, and your father'll paddle you in the woodshed." Then she added,--"an' you won't get your ball."
Dicky seemed to be more worried about the ball than about the woodshed, for he whined.
"Aw, pleeze, Mis' Miller, have a heart!"
You see, "Have a heart!" was an expression he had heard down in the city, and for the last week the boys had been using it every chance they got.
Still it didn't work on Mis' Miller, for she only shook her head angrily and took her broom and shouted,--