Page:Quinby and Son (1925).pdf/57

 what's your hurry? Been up to the hospital to see that fellow that got clipped?"

Bert was a year older and had lost much of his fear of that powerful body and tawny head. Yet he shrank away as the man came too close.

"We just got back," said Dolf.

"When you go back again, just pass him the word to come and see Peg Scudder. Us one-leggers ought to stick together."

"I'll tell him, Mr. Scudder," said Dolf, and Peg leered through his tangle of hair. It wasn't every day in the week that some one honored him with the title of mister.

A month later Bill Harrison came back to Springham. Bert had prepared himself for the crutch; but the sight of his friend pegging along the street was a hard shock. Examination days came and went, and Bert learned that he had passed and had qualified for the Springham High School. The afternoon of graduation day he spent with Bill.

"I'll have to take my eighth grade over again," Bill said listlessly, and moved his stump of leg. "That's one year this thing has cost me already."

All during the graduation exercises Bert sat on the auditorium platform and thought of a boy who should have been there. But next day and in the days that followed, this thought was dulled. There was much to be done that summer. His father's business, after a disappointing start, and