Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

Well, Jimmy had been with the Burtons six years and Annie, our hired girl, had been with us on and off, for five years. I guess everybody thought she hadn't any other name at all until one evening when Jimmy came over and knocked at the back door and asked Mother if Miss Dombacher was home. She wasn't, because she had gone to the Evangelical Lutheran Church; but after that Jimmy used to come over, and Annie would put two chairs out in the? yard under the apple tree and they would sit and talk. Or Jimmy would talk. He would talk and talk and talk, and every once in a while Annie would say, “Yes,” and, after she learned it, “No.” So, after a couple of years, Jimmy began to hold Annie's hand when he talked to her, and in a couple of years more they got engaged. I guess they liked each other.

I was in our dining-room one day, looking to see if Annie had put any fresh cookies in the jar in the closet, when I heard my mother say, “Oh, Annie!” in the kitchen, as if she was sorry about something. So then Annie said:

“I bin sorry to go avay, too, ma'am, but it is right everybody should get married once or twice.”

“I know,” my mother said; “but I don't know what I will ever do without you, Annie.”

So then Annie cried, and there were no cookies, so I went out.

Well, it was like this: Jimmy had been saving his money ever since Annie came to our house and now he had enough to get married on and buy a couple of acres; so they were going to be married, and he was going to leave the Burtons and raise garden stuff and peddle it. Annie was going to raise chickens and sell eggs, and they would have a cow and sell milk.

So now I come to the story part of the story. I guess what the story is about is that sometimes it is a good thing for a fellow to have a girl, because if Mamie Little hadn't been my girl maybe Jimmy and Annie would never have been married.

There were two parts about the story. One was that a circus was coming to town and me and Swatty weren't going; the other was that the schoolhouse wore out and they built a new one.

The night before the circus was coming there was going to be a reception in the dandy big new schoolhouse to raise money for a library. Everybody was going to go, and I guess everybody old enough was going to take his girl. Anyway me and Swatty and Bony got to talking about taking girls to parties and receptions and things, and the first thing you know we said we'd do it.

I guess I said Swatty was afraid, and Swatty dared me back, and we both dared Bony, and so we wouldn't any of us take the dare. So Bony asked Lucy and she said she'd go with him if my mother would let her. When Bony told me I didn't believe him, but I asked Lucy and she said Bony had asked her, and that Mamie Little was as mad as mad because I hadn't asked Mamie. So I said: