“Sh!” he said, in a warning whisper.  “I’m afraid the boss will find out that I’m here.  He started to the store for some tobacco as soon as you left.  He’s been wild fer some, but didn’t have no money. Don’t you leave that bear out here to-night, if you ever expect to see it again! That wasn’t true what he told you.  He never saw the bear till two months ago, and he sold it to you cheap because he’s a-goin’ to steal it back again to-night, and make off up the road with it.  He went off a-grinnin’ over the slick way he’d fooled you, and I jes’ had to come and tell, ’cause you’ve been so good to me.  I’ll never forget the little kid’s givin’ me the coat off his own back, if I live to be a hundred.  Now don’t blab on me, or the boss would nearly kill me.”

“Is that man your father?” began Keith, but Jonesy, alarmed by some sudden noise, sprang to the door, and disappeared in the twilight.

The boys looked at each other a moment, with surprise and indignation in their faces.  There was a hurried consultation in the hay-mow.  A few moments later the boys were smuggling their new pet into the house, and up the back stairs.  They scarcely dared breathe until it was safe in their own room.

All the time that they were dressing for the party, they were trying to decide where to put it for the night, so that neither the tramp nor the family could discover it.  What Jonesy had told them about the man’s dishonest intention did not relieve them from their promise.  They were amazed that any one could be so mean, and longed to tell their Aunt Allison all about it; still, one of the conditions on which they had bought the bear was that they were to “keep mum,” and they stuck strictly to that promise.

By the time they were dressed, they had decided to put it in the blue room, a guest-chamber in the north wing, seldom used in winter, because it was so hard to heat.  “Nobody will ever think of coming in here,” said Malcolm, “and it will be plenty warm for a bear if we turn on the furnace a little.”  As he spoke, he was tying the bear’s rope around a leg of the big, high-posted bed.

“Won’t Ginger be surprised?” answered Keith.  “We’ll tell her that we have a valentine six feet long, and keep her guessing.”

There was no time for teasing, however, as the first guest arrived while they were still in the blue room.

“I hate to go off and leave him in the dark,” said Keith, with a final loving pat.  “I guess he’ll not mind, though.  Maybe he’ll think he is in the woods if I put this good-smelling pine pillow on the rug beside him.”

“Oh, boys,” called Virginia from the hall down-stairs.  “See what an enormous valentine pie Aunt Allison has made!”

Looking over the banisters, the boys saw that a table had been drawn into the middle of the wide reception-hall, and on it sat the largest pie that they had ever seen.  It was in a bright new tin pan, and its daintily browned crust would have made them hungry even if their appetites had not been sharpened by the cold and exercise of the afternoon.