Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/33

 Judy don't have to get up as early as I do and I don't see her at breakfast, but Mrs. Willcox, which has been the same as a mother to me, claims I got rings under my eyes and look terrible. She insists on me taking a swallow of cod liver oil before sitting down to the table and it makes me as sick as a dog and all I can eat is a cup of coffee.

I certainly burnt Ajariah Stubbs up that day and that's a fact. A couple of times I fell asleep behind the fountain and I give a guy pepsin bismuth and a stiff argument, when all he says he asked for was a plain chocolate soda. By dousing my head in cold water in the syrup room and drinking a couple dollars' worth of bromo-seltzer, why, I managed to keep awake till four o'clock, when Judy calls me up and what she told me kept me awake for the rest of the day without no trouble at all!

The minute I hear Judy's voice I know something's up.

"Gale," she says, "please don't be angry with me—but—but I can't go to Stella's with you to-night!"

"Why, what's the matter, Judy?" I says, kind of scared. "Are you sick?"

"No—I'm all right, Gale," she says, still in that funny voice. "It's—it's—Gale, this is very unpleasant and I may as well get it over with at once! Stella—Stella doesn't want you to come, and I think she's horrid, and if I hadn't gone to such trouble about my costume, I wouldn't go either!"

I come near swooning away in a faint right in that phone booth! I feel like yesterday I see in the papers