“Now don’t hang around here all day,” said one of the workmen, kindly enough.  “Run away before you get burned.  Hey, there, Red!  Do you want to blister your foot?”

The red-haired lad grinned mischievously.

“I’d hate to spoil my shoes,” he jeered, “but you watch and I’ll kick over your old pot!  I can, just as easy.”

The other children drew nearer, half-believing the boy would tip over the pot of boiling tar.

“Here,” said another and younger workman, “if we give each of you a little on a stick will you promise to go off and leave us in peace?”

There was an eager chorus of promises, and the good-natured young roofer actually stuck a little ball of the soft tar on each stick thrust at him and watched the small army of boys and girls march up the street, smiling.

“That Mickey Gaffney thinks he’s smart,” said Nellie Yarrow, who had found Brother and Sister in the crowd, as the red-headed boy dashed past them, waving his stick of tar wildly and shouting like an Indian.

“Do you know him?” asked Sister.  “Doesn’t he ever wear shoes?”

“I guess so—­I don’t know.  I don’t like him,” replied Nellie indifferently.

“I don’t believe he has any shoes, not even for Sunday,” Brother said to himself.  “His coat was all torn and his mother sewed his pants up with another kind of cloth so that it shows.  I wonder where ’bouts he lives?”

He opened his mouth to ask Nellie, when Miss Putnam swooped down to the fence as they were passing her house.

“Go way!” she called, leaving her weeding to wave a rake at them.  “Go ’long with you!  Don’t you drop any of that messy tar on my sidewalk!”

“What lovely flowers!” whispered Sister as they obediently hurried past.

Indeed, Miss Putnam had made a beautiful garden and lawn of her small yard, and she did all the work of taking care of it herself.

Sister and Brother carried their tar home with them and left it in the sand heap.  Jimmie had six boys playing in the gymnasium with him and they all stayed to lunch.  Molly and Mother Morrison were used to having unexpected guests, and no matter how many there were, in some mysterious manner plenty of good things to eat appeared on the table,

“Can we come out and watch you?” asked Brother when the boys were going back to the barn.

“We’re going swimming,” answered Jimmie.

“Can’t we go swimming?” inquired Sister hopefully.

“You can not!” retorted Jimmie.  “Why don’t you take a nap, or—­ something?”

“Come on out to the barn, Roddy,” Sister urged Brother when Jimmie and his friends had gone whistling on their way to the river.

“Now don’t you be meddling with any of those things out there,” warned Molly, clearing the table.  “Your brother doesn’t like you to touch his exercises, you know.”

Molly called all the apparatus the boys used “exercises.”