order them out of the way. And then Bill Harrison, stumbling, lurched into a carefully dressed dummy destined for one of the windows and sent it crashing to the floor.
"Bert," his father said sharply, "I'll have to ask you to do your playing in the street."
Bert reddened, and after a moment walked out of the store with Dolf at his heels. Bill, before following them, brushed the dummy with a whisk broom.
"I don't blame your father for getting sore," he told Bert.
"Your father doesn't get sore when we're in his store."
"N—no," Bill admitted honestly; "but we don't go running around knocking things over."
Bert's sensitive nature was not salved. He had been censured before his friends. He went home. At supper that night his father said:
"You'll have to stop fooling around the store, Bert. It doesn't look businesslike."
Fooling! And he had been so proud to display its wonders to Dolf and to Bill. He scowled down at his plate. Later, when his father had gone back to business, his mother tried to soothe him.
"Dad is having unaccustomed worries just now, Bert. You should be more considerate."
"He needn't have any worries about me," the boy said sourly. "I'll keep away. I know when I'm not wanted."