Page:Greatest Short Stories (1915).djvu/224

Rh all got to be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he’s twenty-two; so he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?” “Forty, Billy, last August.”

“Well, you aren’t so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall’s grandfather isn’t more than that, and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and wheels him around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I bet! Well, I'll tell you how I’ll keep my accounts; I’ll have a stick like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I’ll gouge a piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I’ll gouge a piece out of the other.”

“Spend a what!” said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu, who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.

“A toadskin, ma,” replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell glance of contempt. “Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?”

“Why, ma! don’t you know what a toadskin is? Here’s one,” said Billy, drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. “ [sic]And don’t I wish I had lots of ’em!”

“Oh!” sighed his mother, “to think I should have a child so addicted to slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!”

“Well, mother,” replied Billy, “if you wanted two boys just alike you’d oughter had twins. 221