“Hello, Bully!” called the two brothers. “Do you want to have a game of marbles?”

 

“Of course I do,” answered Bully. “I just bought some new ones. ‘First shot agates³!’”

 

“First shot!” yelled Billie, right after Bully.

 

“First shot!” also cried Johnnie, almost at the same time.

 

“Well, I guess we’re about even,” spoke⁴ Bully, as he opened his marble bag to look inside. “Now, how are we going to tell who will shoot first?”

 

“I’ll tell you,” proposed Billie. “We’ll each throw a marble up into the air, and the one whose comes down first will shoot first.”

 

Well, the other two animal boys thought that was fair, so they tossed their marble shooters up into the air. Billie only sent his up a little way, for then he knew it would come down first, but Johnnie and Bully didn’t think of this, and they threw their shooters up as high as they could. And, of course, their marbles were so much longer coming down to the ground again.

 

“Oh, ho! Here’s mine!” cried Billie. “I’m to shoot first.”

 

“And here’s mine,” added Johnnie, a little later, as his marble came down.

 

“Yes, but where’s mine?” asked Bully, and they all listened carefully to tell when Bully’s shooter would fall down. But the funny part of it was that it didn’t come.

 

“Say, did you throw it up to the sky?” asked Billie surprised like.

 

“Because, if you did, it won’t come down until Fourth of July,” added Johnnie.

 

“No, I didn’t throw it as high as that,” replied the frog boy. “But perhaps Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, is flying around up there, and he may have taken it in his bill for a joke.”

 

So they looked up toward the clouds as far as they could, but no little sparrow boy did they see.

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