Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/45



same night, when they have all went to bed in Mrs. Willcox's boarding house, I sneaked downstairs, got Judy's schoolbooks off the hall rack, and took 'em up to my room because after I have retired I find that me and sleep can't seem to get acquainted. The first one I open up is a French Dictionary. It could of been a Chinese Grammer for all it means to me! The only French I know is "Oo la la" and "Croix de Guerre," and now that the war's supposed to be over, why, both them remarks has went out of use. The next novel is entitled "Al Gebra" and is simply a case of crossing the alphabet with arithmetic. Two passages of Al gets me dizzy. "How much is twice H?" "Divide Y Z by 56." How do they get that way?

They's two books left, and in one of 'em is a note saying Judy has got to read this pair for her English Literature Class. I immediately join the Class. One book is called "The Saint's Tragedy," dashed off by a fellow named Charles Kingsley. The other is "The Last of the Barons," a much thicker book, by Edward Bulwer Lytton. I come near firing 'em out the window when I see Rags Dempster has wrote his name on the first page of both, right under Judy's!