Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/162

 that night we were in his room and you figured we were cooking up to kill Adele. That's what we scrapped over that night, Ket and me. I wouldn't tell him some jazz was great, for it wasn't; and it wasn't what he could do, if he tried.

"I was trying to make him try. You don't believe it, I know; and I don't expect you to," she cried, holding to his sleeve as he pulled it away. "That's not what I wanted to tell you. It's about the jail, Mr. Clarke. I've been to the jail and seen Ket. The jail," she repeated in a whisper of awe, "I'd no idea what it was. It's a terrible place, isn't it?"

"A jail," Calvin replied, "is designed to be a place of punishment."

"Then it certainly makes good—and before a man's found guilty, too. But I'm not kicking on that, Mr. Clarke," she said hastily. "What's the use, to you? I just want you to help me get some books into the jail to Ket, will you?"

"What books?" asked Calvin suspiciously.

"Music books."

"Some of his, you mean?"

"No; some I'm buying him. He hasn't got them; for he'd never buy them for himself. They're books about point and counterpoint—that's musical composition, probably you know."

"I know the terms," said Calvin.

"I didn't; I heard them to-day at Lyon and Healy's where an awful nice man gave me a list of books just made for Ket. I want to get them into the jail, for he'll read 'em there, when he never would outside. He'll try good things over on the piano in there and get interested in composing before he knows it. My trouble's to be sure he gets the books all right. It's not easy to get books into the jail, I hear; they hold them up because