Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/83

 "No, It ain't everything, Mister O'Malley. But what do you ever expect to amount to, without bein' able to talk decent?"

"I don't see 's talk 'll ever build a flyin'-machine!" cried the boy, in a sudden little rage. "And I 'm a-goin' to school, anyway, 's soon as summer holidays is over!"

"Be you!" mocked the pleader for higher education, wondering what flying-machines had to do with the question. The boy paused to pull Alaska Alice away from the bill-board, where she was contentedly making her dinner on a little pool of scattered paste.

"And when I get into that school," went on Lonely, as he faced the black beads again, and suddenly burned with the foolish passion of the conqueror for conquest, "when I do get in that school, I 'll show 'em a thing or two about book-learnin'!" And as the vaunting heat of his vain little fire left him, he added: "And maybe something about mindin' my own business, too!"

"And mebbe something about mindin' your manners, too!" snapped the angular woman with the basket, as she and her beaded bonnet went tartly on their way, leaving Lonely,