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of stuff. You’ll see.” Leon
started singing. “I’m gonna pay you ba-ack. I’m gonna pay you
ba-ack.”
    “ Leon, just shut up,” Emery
pleaded.
    Leon happily obeyed, and the boys
walked back to their neighborhood.

Chapter
Ten
     
    When Philip approached his house a
little before dinner time, he could hear his Aunt Louise’s voice
all the way to the sidewalk. He stepped inside the front door and
listened.
    “ They’re gone,” Aunt Louise
cried. “Who would steal a person’s pants? Who, I ask
you?”
    Philip tiptoed into the living room
where he saw his father slumped in his favorite chair. Aunt
Louise’s voice came from the kitchen.
    “ What happened?” asked
Philip.
    Mr. Felton gave his son a weak smile
and shook his head. “Your Aunt Louise rinsed out her slacks—the
ones like she gave your mother and me. She hung them out on the
line in the backyard. When she went to get them a few minutes ago,
they weren’t there.”
    “ Somebody stole her
pants?”
    Philip’s father spread his hands.
“They’re not there.”
    “ Who would want a pair of
pants like those?”
    “ Good question . . . oh.”
    Philip’s mother walked into the room
followed by a very unhappy Aunt Louise.
    “ Those pants were
expensive,” Aunt Louise went on. “I don’t understand it. What kind
of a neighborhood do you live in?”
    Philip’s mother looked at him. “Philip,
do you know anything about Aunt Louise’s missing pants?”
    “ Me! How would I know
anything about them?”
    Aunt Louise stared daggers at him. “Are
there boys in the neighborhood would do an awful thing like
that?”
    “ An awful thing like steal
your pants? I don’t think so.” Philip felt a strong urge to laugh,
but he fought it.
    “ Louise,” Philip’s father
said, “I don’t want you to suffer such a loss. You can have mine.
Yours were black; the ones you gave me were black. I would hate for
your visit to us to be spoiled.”
    Aunt Louis suddenly calmed down. “Well,
that’s very kind of you, I must say.”
    “ These things happen,
Louise,” Philip’s mother added. “And the pants may turn up. You
never know. Until they do, you’ll have a new pair of slacks just
like the ones you lost.”
    “ Well . . .”
    Philip’s mother turned to Philip.
“We’re going out to dinner tonight. I already took Becky to Mrs.
Moriarty’s.” Mrs. Moriarty was Philip’s favorite neighbor. She
always had candy available and loved to share. “You can go over to
Emery’s.”
    “ I just was at Emery’s. He didn’t say
anything.”
    “ I only now called.
Go.”
    Philip didn’t wait.
     
    ~ * ~
    “ Ha! She lost her
pants.”
    “ You should’ve seen how
fast my father gave her his new pants.”
    A siren and the flash of red lights
through the window caught the boys’ attention.
    “ Mom,” Emery called.
“When’s dinner?”
    “ Not for another hour,”
came a voice.
    “ The siren stopped,” said
Emery. “Want to go see?”
    “ Might as well.”
    The boys went outside and ran to the
corner. Two police cars, their roof lights spinning, sat parked two
blocks ahead.
    The boys joined a growing crowd in
front of a house where three policemen stood outside the front door
talking to a very excited woman.
    Emery turned to a man with a white
mustache. “What happened, mister?”
    “ Best I can tell it seems
they were away for a day or two, and somebody got in and stole
their new television and a few other things. Lady doesn’t like it
much, does she?” The man said something to the woman with him, and
they walked closer to the house.
    Philip looked at Emery. “Isn’t this the
house that threw away the old TV—the house we had on our list for
Mr. Sorino?”
    “ Yeah.”
    “ Weird.”
    “ Hey, you think Mr. Sorino
might give them back their old TV?”
    Philip watched the woman in the doorway
still talking to the policeman, her hands waving all over the
place. “I don’t know. Not if it was broken, and he already fixed
it. He’d want