“Are you the judge that gives diworces?”
“I'm the one that don't give them unless I have to, son,” the judge laughed. “Looking for one? You don't look as if you had reached that age and state yet.”
“It ain't mine,” Swatty said. “It's Bony's folkses. They're having a fight and they're going to get a diworce and me and Georgie and Bony don't want them to. So we rowed over to tell you not to give them one.”
The judge felt in his pocket and got out his spectacles and put them on and looked at us. He asked which was Bony and then he knew who Bony was and that he knew Bony's folks. He said he did.
“And you don't want any divorces in your family, hey?” he said. “Why not?”
Bony didn't say anything, so Swatty started to tell about the bicycle, but before he got very far Bony just doubled over and put his head on his knees and began to beller like a real baby. So the judge stopped Swatty.
“Son,” he said to Swatty, “I guess you've mistooken the proper legal grounds for not giving divorces. The desire of a youth to learn to ride one of the condemned things when he is related to the separating parties only by neighborhood is not sufficient to sway the court. But you, son,” he said to Bony, “have got exactly the right idea. You've swayed this old, bald-headed court right down to the mud he's standing in and, so help me John Joseph Rogers! if those two parents of yours get a divorce it will only be over my dead body! Hey, Sheb! can these kids go up to your house and get some buttermilk?”
So I said I didn't like buttermilk and the judge said: “Caesar's ghost! I didn't mean get it for you; I meant get it for us!”
So we got it. So Bony's folks didn't get a divorce. Anyway, if they did they didn't separate apart from each other and that was all me and Swatty cared for because Herb Schwartz wouldn't be scared to marry Fan, and maybe we could hurry up the wedding and get the tricycle sooner.