This "Well, Top Step," said Stephen one of those evenings, "eleven boys beside the stand-by Jimsy. Fair to middling popularity, I should say!" "Popularity?" She opened her candid eyes wide at him. "Why, Stepper, you know it's not that! They don't come to see me! They don't mind me, of course, but it's the eats, and meeting each other,—and mostly Jimsy, I guess! Mercy,—the chocolate's boiling over!" She clearly believed it, and it was more or less true. The Carmody home of a Sunday night was a sort of glorified club house without rules or dues or by-laws. It was the thing to do, if one were so lucky. It rather placed a boy in the scheme of things to be one of "the Sunday-night bunch." Jimsy was the Committee on Membership. "Let's have that Burke boy out to supper Sunday, shan't we?" Honor would say. "He's doing so well on the team." "No," Jimsy would answer, definitely. "Not at the house, Skipper." Honor accepted his judgments[Pg 28] unquestioningly. Some way, with the deep wisdom of boys, he knew, better than she could, that the young Burke person was better on the field than in the drawing-room. There was nothing snobbish in their gatherings; shabby boys came, girls who had made their own little dimity dresses. It was the intangible, inexorable caste of the best boyhood, and Honor knew, comfortably, that her particular King could do no wrong. [Pg 28] The rooting section had a special yell for Jimsy, when he had sped down the field to a touchdown or kicked a difficult goal. It followed the regular High School yell, hair-lifting in its fierceness: and Honor utterly agreed with them. [Pg 29] [Pg 29] CHAPTER III The house across the street from the Carmody place was suddenly sold. People were curious and a little anxious. Every one on that block had been there for a generation or so; there was a sense of permanence about them all—even the Kings. "Eastern people," said Mrs. Lorimer. "A mother, rather delicate-looking, and one son, eighteen or nineteen I should say. He's frail-looking, too, and he limps a little. I imagine they're very nice. Everything about them"—her magazine reading had taken her quite reasonably to a front window the day
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