"May I have my marbles—and—ten cents?" he breathed. "You see, it will take the quarter to pay Mrs. Brawn, and I would like just one little drink of lemon sour."
Renny handed over ten cents and the marbles.
Wake threw himself on the grass, flat on his back, staring up at the friendly blue of the sky. A sense of joyous peace possessed him. The afternoon was before him. He had nothing to do but enjoy himself. Lovingly he rattled the marbles in one pocket and the thirty-five cents in the other. Life was rich, full of infinite possibilities.
Presently a hot sweet smell assailed his sensitive nostrils. It was rising from the window of the basement kitchen near him. He rolled over and sniffed again. Surely he smelled cheese cakes. Delicious, crusty, lovely cheese cakes. He crept briskly on his hands and knees to the window and peered down into the kitchen. Mrs. Wragge had just taken a pan of them out of the oven. Rags was washing the dishes and already chewing the gum. Mrs. Wragge's face was crimson with heat. Looking up, she saw Wakefield.
"Have a cake?" she asked, and handed one up to him.
"Oh, thanks. And—and—Mrs. Wragge, please may I have one for my friend?"
"You ain't got no friend with yer," said Rags, vindictively champing the gum.
Wakefield did not deign to answer him. He only held out one thin little brown hand for the other cake. Mrs. Wragge laid it on his palm. "Look out it don't burn ye," she advised.
Blissfully he lay on the shaggy grass of the lawn, munching one cake and gazing quietly at the other recumbent on the grass before him. But when he came to it he really had not room for the second cake. If Finch
