"I don't care if I get sixty days!" screamed the outraged laborer. "The city can look after my missus and the kids if their nateral provider is took from them. That wall is comin' down! I'm h'only a workin'-man, and I don't mind bein' spit on once in a while, but I won't stand for it bein' rubbed in."

It was a sultry June day, the first of the summer vacation, and toward noon Mrs. Cadge set out to take her husband a bite of lunch. The little Cadges accompanied her, eager to exhibit the noble castle which they had completed on Catnip Creek. When they came to that charming stream, their eyes flew open in amazement and their jaws dropped.

"Why, mamma, look at daddy!" they cried in unison. "Daddy's workin'!"

Incredible though it seemed, it was true indeed. Father worked. Mrs. Cadge wondered whether she, too, was to have a vacation, after her years of drudgery.

Cadge worked furiously, his rage uncooled by the waters of the Catnip which flowed through his shoes. He had discarded coat, vest, and hat, and was hurling rocks with the strength of a maddened giant, clear across the stream. What splendid muscles he had!

A tier or two of Mrs. Pipkin's wall was already down. The telephone within her cottage was ringing madly.

Even as the Cadgelings watched their parent sweating at his toil, a blue-coated figure ran swiftly down the bank, caught the hard-working man by the collar, and firmly led him away to where steady work awaited him.

Mrs. Cadge watched him go with mingled feelings. She had seen him depart thus before, and remembered how much easier it was that month to feed four mouths instead of five. Besides, the exercise on the rock pile would do him good, poor man. A night-watchman's position was so confining.

Mr. Snavely had driven up to the curb, and the Widow Pipkin ran out all of a flutter. They sympathetically related to Mrs. Cadge the events of the morning which had led to her husband's arrest.

"And there was only an hour's work to be done on the job," said Mr. Snavely judicially.

"I would gladly pay six dollars cash to have it just as it was this morning," added the tremulous Widow Pipkin, "and I'd make it ten if it were done as Mr. Snavely says."

"And I'd still be willing to write a receipt for the full seven dollars for six dollars cash," interposed that astute philanthropist.

Mrs. Cadge's shrewd, birdlike eyes were half closed in mental computation; ten dollars for the wall and one dollar discount on the grocery bill, that would make eleven dollars clear.

"Come along, kiddies," she said, "you and me will pitch in and finish that wall to the queen's taste in an hour or two!" And she did.

Eleven dollars clear, and the watchman's pay still going on, Cadge on the rock pile, hence the biggest mouth of the family fed by the city. Indeed, indeed, the little Cadges were not the only ones who enjoyed a vacation when father worked!

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