Page:Georgie by Dorothea Deakin, 1906.djvu/57

The Goddess Girl of it ought to have been enough for any boy of your age. The thing's absurd. Oh, Georgie, Georgie, when the girls came out to play, why weren't you wise like your namesake? Why didn't you run away?"

"I wish to Heaven I had," he cried, with heartfelt fervor. And I wished he had too.

I rose and walked up and down the library trying vainly, for the hundredth time, to think of any possible way out of the muddle for the foolish boy. Many were the scrapes I had helped him out of; but this last one, entered into so lightly, bade fair to grow into a tragedy in the future, if it was allowed to continue.

Georgie's handsome face was clouded; Georgie's blue eyes held a shadow which had no business there; Georgie's pretty mouth drooped pathetically at the corners; and Georgie was only twenty-one.

"Martin," he said earnestly, "you know—it's not the sort of thing a fellow cares to talk about, but she—she tries to improve my mind. It's awful! Gives me 41