We can give them to him." "I just said--" "I don't mean the branches," Sam explained.

"We'll leave the branches on the trees, but just pull the leaves off the branches and put 'em in the bucket and feed 'em to him out of the bucket." Penrod thought this plan worth trying, and for three-quarters of an hour the two boys were busy with the lower branches of various trees in the yard.

Thus they managed to supply Whitey with a fair quantity of wet leaves, which he ate in a perfunctory way, displaying little of his earlier enthusiasm.

And the work of his purveyors might have been more tedious if it had been less damp, for a boy is seldom bored by anything that involves his staying-out in the rain without protection.

The drizzle had thickened; the leaves were heavy with water, and at every jerk the branches sent fat drops over the two collectors.