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 fore Judy and her mother. He goes over very big with Mrs. Willcox, for she immediately tells me I'm getting the chance of a lifetime and I'll be crazy not to take it.

Even Judy seems to think that way too, telling me—in one quick whisper which sent my heart pumping like a hydraulic drill—that she don't want me to go away. But I licked that temptation before it got its hands up. I wasn't going to be buried in no Drew City carpet factory before I'd had a chance to see for myself am I a false alarm or do I mean something! So I thanked Rags as polite as I could, but I says I got something better in view. Then I says good night all around and went up to my room.

The next morning, after I pack, I went down to the Commercial House, and for one solid hour me and Nate Shapiro argued each other black in the face. Only by flatly refusing to leave Drew City with him do I finally get what I'm after. I got a hundred bucks from him and mailed it to Mrs. Willcox in a plain envelope, with nothing to show who it come from. So that was that.

Well, Drew City's only thirty-eight miles from New York, and I figured I can maybe run down for Sundays. I promised to write Spence every few days and let him know how they're breaking for me, and then I go back to the house for the big farewell to Judy and her mother. Now that Mrs. Willcox seen I was determined to go, why, she cried a little bit and actually kissed me on the forehead, saying she had come to look on me like a son. And even though she thought I was making a big mistake, she hoped I had all kinds