However, they were allowed to go with Ralph to the movies the next Saturday. Ralph himself explained to Daddy Morrison that he had promised to take them and then found he had a previous engagement. He thought, and Daddy Morrison did, too, that having to stay in the yard for a whole week was punishment enough even if one exception was permitted.  
So Brother and Sister went down to the "big" theatre with Ralph the next Saturday afternoon, and then they had to stay in their yard all day Sunday and all day Monday, and after that they might again go where they pleased.
 
"Let's go see if Norman Crane's aunt sent him a birthday present," suggested Sister the first morning they were free to leave the yard.
 
Norman Crane was a little friend who lived several blocks away, and whose aunt in New York City sent him wonderful presents at Christmas time and on his birthday. He had had a party a few days before, and of course Brother and Sister could not go—all because they would go to those unlucky movies!
 
Brother was willing to stop at Norman's house, but when they reached there they found Norman had gone to the city with his mother for a day's shopping.
 
"I smell tar¹," declared Brother, as they came down the steps and turned into the street where Miss Putnam lived in the haunted house—only it wasn't called that any longer. "Oh, look, Betty, they're mending something."
 
There was a little group of children about a big pot of boiling tar and workmen were mending the roofs of three or four houses that were built exactly alike and were owned by the same man. These houses were always repaired and painted at the same time every year.
 
Nearest to the boiling pot—indeed, with his red head almost in the hot steam—was the little boy Brother and Sister had noticed walking on Miss Putnam's picket² fence. A puddle³ of tar had splashed over on the ground and the red-headed boy was stirring it with a stick held between his bare toes.
 
"Now don't hang around here all day," said one of the workmen, kindly⁴ enough. "Run away before you get burned. Hey, there, Red! Do you want to blister⁵ your foot?"
 
The red-haired lad grinned mischievously⁶.
 
"I'd hate to spoil my shoes," he jeered⁷, "but you watch and I'll kick over your old pot! I can, just as easy."
 
The other children drew nearer, half-believing the boy would tip over the pot of boiling tar.
 
"Here," said another and younger workman, "if we give each of you a little on a stick will you promise to go off and leave us in peace?"
 
There was an eager chorus of promises, and the good-natured young roofer actually stuck a little ball of the soft tar on each stick thrust at him and watched the small army of boys and girls march up the street, smiling.
 
"That Mickey Gaffney thinks he's smart," said Nellie Yarrow, who had found Brother and Sister in the crowd, as the red-headed boy dashed past them, waving his stick of tar wildly and shouting like an Indian.
 
"Do you know him?" asked Sister. "Doesn't he ever wear shoes?"
 
"I guess so—I don't know. I don't like him," replied Nellie indifferently.
 
"I don't believe he has any shoes, not even for Sunday," Brother said to himself. "His coat was all torn and his mother sewed his pants up with another kind of cloth so that it shows. I wonder where 'bouts⁸ he lives?"
 
He opened his mouth to ask Nellie, wh............