“Oh! you don't need to think I'd ask you, smarty!” she said. “I don't care. I only asked you because Mamie Little asked me to ask you.”
So then I felt how awful it would be to go to reform school and everything and I went up to my room and cried on my bed. I was up there, but mostly done crying, when my father came up. He put his hand on me and said:
“Here, now! None of this, old sport. Buck up! We'll get you out of this all right, some way. Come on down to supper.”
So then he kissed me. He hadn't kissed me for a long time before that, because men don't, but it was all right this time. I went down to supper like he said.
Well, Herb and my father and Swatty and me had a meeting nearly every night in our dining-room and talked about how we were getting along, but we weren't getting along very much. The only thing that got along was Fan, and she was making up to Herb again. She would come into the dining-room and sit and talk to Herb and father, but she couldn't fool me. She was making up to Herb all right. I could see that.
Well, one day Tom Burton came over to our house and Fan and Tom Burton had a regular row. It was a dandy. And that settled Tom, I guess. He never came to our house again.
Me and Swatty had to go to school just the same as ever. I wished, if they were going to send us to reform school they would go ahead and do it, because Miss Carter began to get mean to us. Professor Martin was back and nearly every day Miss Carter kept us in school and Professor Martin came in and talked to her while she kept us in. Mostly they walked home together, because me and Swatty saw them.
Well, me and Swatty had been sort of mad at Bony, like I told you, but you can't keep mad always, and we started to letting him be with us again. So one day me and Swatty and Bony got out of school late, because Miss Carter had kept us in, and Scratch-Cat had been kept in, too. We all came out of the schoolhouse together. It was almost spring again and Bony had some marbles he had bought, so we said:
“Let's play marbles.”
Scratch-Cat didn't want to.