Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/71

Rh yellow cars trundle past him a splendid idea came to him. He would telephone! There was a booth in the library, and if he had a nickel—quick examination of his change showed that he was possessed of eleven cents beyond the sum required to purchase admission to the theater. With a load off his mind, he hurried on faster than ever, ran across the library grounds with no heed to the "Keep off the Grass" signs and simply hurtled through the swinging green doors.

It was the work of only a minute or two to seize a book from the rack on the counter—it happened to be a treatise on the Early Italian Painters, but Fudge didn't care—and make the exchange. The assistant librarian looked somewhat surprised at Fudge's choice, but secretly hoped that it indicated a departure from the sensational fiction usually selected by the boy, and passed the volume across to him at last with an approving smile. Fudge was too impatient to see the smile, however. The book once in his possession, he hurried to the telephone booth in the outer hall and demanded his number. Then a perfectly good five-cent piece dropped forever out of his possession and he heard his mother's voice at the other end of the line.

"This is Fudge. Say, Ma, I thought—I'm at the library, Ma, and I got the book I wanted, and I