The young man found himself on the street again, with a sense of injustice rankling in his mind. As he stood there trying to soothe his temper before tackling the Landon people, his eye caught the end of a tiny tragedy.
He heard an excited little scream. He saw a white-sleeved arm thrust frantically from one of the second-story windows of the Landon factory. He watched a square of snowy linen float out on a passing gust of wind. For a second it seemed that it would escape the clutches of the waiting tree and come safely to the ground; but just at the critical moment the breeze died, dropping the white handkerchief, like an opened parachute, across a network of autumn foliage. There it rested, twenty feet or more above the sidewalk and a dozen from the girl at the window.
Vern looked up. The instinct of mere politeness that had first urged him to offer assistance tautened into enthusiasm. He told himself the girl was more charming than any girl he had ever seen.
“I’ll get it,” he called encouragingly, though without the slightest idea in the world how he might bring about that end.
“If you will, please,” she begged. “It’s a bit of real Irish lace, and I haven’t any business owning it—let alone losing it.”
As he stared at the girl and the handkerchief, the inspiration came.
“Here, buddie,” he said, “lend me your football for a minute.”
Obediently the small boy tossed it over. It was round, but slightly smaller and not as heavy as the basket-ball to which he had been accustomed. Also, the handkerchief was much higher than any basket for which he had tried in a game.
He poised it carefully, swinging it up and down in his two hands to gauge the weight. Then, with a quick flirt of his arms, he shot it up and over.
It curved in a long arc and plumped squarely into the middle of the white patch in the tree. The twigs bent. The handkerchief fluttered down into his waiting hands.