"Chiefly. He says 'One reason I cover this up is so it won't set foolish ideas into boys' heads. There's many a business man would pay ten thousand dollars to get rid of the ugly marks. There are all kinds of ways but none of 'em work well and most of 'em cost the fellow that owns the skin an awful lot o' pain as well as the money. The way to get rid of tattoo marks,' he says, 'is not to put 'em on.'"
"But since you can't help having 'em, you aren't going to let 'em keep you down, are you, Brick, old top?"
It was Jolly Bill who asked the question. They had thought him asleep in his cart.
"No, nor anything else," declared Glen. "I'm not so far behind. Somebody asked me once, 'How does it come you talk so well?' They don't understand that we learn as much in the state schools as in the regular public school, and we have to do our best or make a show at it, whether we want to or not."
"But, Brick," persisted Goosey. "You said a lot about the tattoo marks, but you didn't say yet whether it makes you strong."
"Chick-chick," commanded Jolly Bill. "You lead that little boy away. Whatever made you bring him here with his sad story? What is there in a little India ink, pricked beneath the skin, to make you strong—does it make father's shirts strong when mother uses it to put his initials in the corner? Lead him off, Chick-chick."
"That's all right," Goosey observed. "Matt Burton thinks it's what makes Brick strong. Matt says no reform school boy could knock him down if he hadn't been doped up with some stimulant."
"You mustn't pay too much attention to what Matt Burton says," counseled Spencer.
"Oh, I don't. Matt says there wasn't any thief and there isn't any cave, and I believe there is. Matt says he wouldn't believe it, anyway, 'cause Brick says it's so."
"You'd better run along, little boy, before you say something Matt'll be sorry for," said Spencer.