“Wouldn’t you like to have your broken club mended?”

“Yes, yes,” replied Charlie, excitedly.  “How?”

“There is one way to do it and fix all things right again.”  As Will spoke he also attended to his breakfast, interjecting his words amid sips of coffee and mouthfuls of Aunt Stanshy’s flaky biscuit.  He was hungry, as he had been out before breakfast in answer to a furious alarm of fire.

“You see, when a club is in pieces, that it may be mended again, each piece must resolve to do what it can toward a coming together again.  Will you?”

“Yes, I will.”

“There’s one.  Who is the next one to bring round, the next piece of club to make willing to be joined to the rest?”

“I guess Wort feels about as stuffy as any one.  There he is out in the lane now.”

“Is he?  Go, get him.”

The “stuffy” splinter of the club was brought in.  Will had disappeared, but soon came back to the table, bringing from his room a neat, white package of—­Charlie’s curious eyes could not guess what.

“Art you Wort Wentworth?” asked Will.

“Yes.”

“I have some candy for you.”

Here the apothecary displayed various long, dainty sticks of candy, exceedingly toothsome in their looks.  There were checkerberry-pipe and licorice-pipe and sassafras-pipe, and—­how Wort’s eyes did glisten and his mouth water as he imagined the different kinds there!

Will did not forget, to Charlie’s joy, that another boy present had also several sweet teeth.  Having sweetened up Wort’s disposition, Will said,

“You and Charlie will now do me a favor, won’t you?”

“I will,” said Charlie, eagerly, who had great admiration for the apothecary, but might possibly have been moved also by great love for his candy.

“And I will,” said Wort, determined not to be outdone by Charlie.

“Well, now, the club that has been broken is going to be mended, and you two will forgive and forget, wont you?”

“I will,” declared Charlie, promptly.

Wort hesitated.

“Take this while you are thinking,” said Will, pressing into Wort’s hands an extra large piece of rose-pipe.

As he took it, Wort growled, “Sid began it.”

“But will you end it if Sid is willing to make up?  You wont hold out?”

“N—­n—­o.”

“There is Sid!” said Charlie.

“Where?”

“Going along the lane, that boy with a blue cap on.”

“You two stay here, and tell Aunt Stanshy, Charlie, that I’ll be back soon to finish my breakfast,” and away went Will, without a hat, a cake of bread in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other.

“If that fellow isn’t the greatest!  He would leave a funeral in just that way if the impulse took him,” declared Aunt Stanshy, watching him from the window, and secretly admiring him.  “What a boy!  He makes lots of trouble for me, O dear!”