it looks to have a boy sawing away on an accordion in a first-class store and congregating a crowd of dirty-faced children? Do you think it's businesslike?"
Bert had reddened. "I . . . I just got playing, and then I forgot."
"Forgetting doesn't help a business. Put that thing away. I'll take it home to-night."
"I'll take it home now," Bert said. He ate a moody supper. He did not tell his mother what had happened, but she, accustomed to his mercurial spells of good temper and bad, knew that something had gone amiss. That night she questioned her husband.
"Bert has a bee buzzing him," she said, "and by all the signs I think it's stinging. Did anything happen at the store?"
Mr. Quinby explained the transgression and was surprised to find that, after a few hours, it had lost a bit of its heinous aspect. Mrs. Quinby looked thoughtful.
"Of course he didn't think," she said. "You can't put an old head on fifteen-year-old shoulders. When Bert explained that he had forgotten, it was his way of saying he was sorry. You know Bert. If he thinks he's making amends and is rebuffed, up bobs that distressing pig-headedness and you can't move him."
"I guess you're right," the man said ruefully. "I seem to have a genius for rubbing that lad the
