Ma excitedly goes to Mrs. Higgs’s house with the newly finished dress, planning to get something special for dinner with the cash for her work. She returns upset; Mrs. Higgs refused to buy the dress because it was hand stitched. Beans grows fearful watching his mother cry. The incident prompts him to accept Johnny Cakes’s request to ring the alarms again. This time, they plan for Beans to ring four alarms to buy more time; Beans does a practice run. Johnny is happy with the time but gives Beans a pair of shoes so that he is sure not to injure himself as he runs. Beans takes the key from Too Bad’s house during marble playing and sneaks away from home on the assigned night. Things do not go as smoothly as before; gum blocks the third alarm keyhole, so Beans skips it. Also, the new shoes give him bad blisters because he has no socks. He throws them in a garbage can before sneaking into Too Bad’s house to return the key.

The next day at school, Beans’s friends discuss the prank false alarms the night before. Too Bad shows up in the shoes Beans secretly discarded, saying he found them in the trash can.