Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/28

 "Judy," I says, "I would of been a very, very thin little boy if I hadn't of stayed away from school to sell newspapers. We got so crazy about food in our family that we just had to have some every day or we wouldn't play!"

Judy stops eating that swell sundae and gives me a long look. Then she nods her head and sighs.

"I—I understand, now," she says, kind of soft. "Oh—that's criminal!"

"Well, Judy," I says, "they's plenty fellows like me, as far as that part of it goes. And then, again, somebody has got to be soda jerkers, I guess—eh—" I am trying to laugh matters off.

"Surely, Gale, you don't expect to be a soda clerk all your life?" she cuts in on me. The sundae is melting away.

"No, Judy, I don't!" I says slowly, sitting on the ice-cream tank back of the counter. "For one thing, I'd have a hard time shaking up malted milks when I got to be eighty-five, and for another thing, Judy, I'm going to get somewhere! Right now I ain't got no more idea than a baby of what I'm going to be. I'm busy now living . . . some job for us guys. But I ain't going to just sit back and moan because I fail to get born in a mint, like Rags Dempster and that bunch. I got too much fighting blood in me to moan, Judy! I'm going to get me a education. I'm going to get that by hook or crook! I got to get some trick which will keep me alive while I'm plowing through books like you got there and trying to understand what they mean. Say—yesterday they was a lot of them