Ghe [®\issing Peneil-@ase.

R( TWAS an aluminum pencil-case, ‘warranted to wear like 18-carat
gold,” which George had bought for twenty-five cents of a jeweler
in Kingsthorpe who was selling off his surplus stock. Arthur was
@> much struck with the elegance and desirability of the purchase.

“T’ll swap with you for it!” he said. “I'll give you my two-
bladed knife and a big jew’s-harp.”

“Hah! Don’t you wish you may get it?” responded Geerge.

But undisguised admiration, with, perhaps, a covetousness—for
Iam not going to make out that Arthur Hewlet was perfection—
were visible in his cousin’s eyes as they lingeringly followed the return of the
pencil to George’s breast-pocket.

The two boys, with some companions, spent the greater part of that after-
noon, which was a half-holiday, in playing “rounders” on the common. George,
who in anything of this sort displayed tremendous energy, took off his jacket
and threw it on the grass, near at hand, that he might have the freer use of his
arms.

“Oh, I say!” he observed to his chum, Parkins, as they returned home;
“you haven’t seen what I bought in Kingsthorpe yesterday.”

He felt in his breast-pocket, but no pencil was there.

“]—what—why! Where's it gone?” he queried in consternation, standing
still that he might the better search in every one of his pockets. “Why, I’ve
never gone and lost it, surely!”

“Lost what?”

“A jolly nice gold pencil-case—or as good as gold—that I gave a shilling
for!” answered George. ‘Well, it’s gone, anvhow, as clean as a whistle! Well,
now, here’s a go!”

“Tt might have fallen out when you took your coat off,” suggested Parkins.
The others were far ahead by this time, and Arthur out of sight. ‘“Let’s go
back and see.”

They did so, searching the grass upon their hands and knees for a radius
of several yards from the place where the game had been played, and so nar-
rowly that nothing larger than a needle could have escaped their sharp eyes.
But nothing did they find but a button off Percy Powell’s waistcoat—he was
continually shedding his buttons wherever he went!—and as the spring twilight
began to close in they were compelled to give up in despair.