V. SCRATCH-CAT
Well, when mother heard that Herb and Fan had had another fight she was so hurt by it she just set down and cried and said, “Fan! Fan! I don't know what is going to become of you with that temper of yours, because Herbert Schwartz is one of the finest young men in the whole world and if you keep on you 'll delineate his affections away from you entirely forever,” or something like that.
And it did look like it. Professor Martin's leg didn't get any better and he had to go over to the hospital at Chicago to have it broke again and fixed and Herb was made a regular professor at our school and principal of it, and every day he used to come into our room and talk awhile with Miss Carter, and walk home with her. I tell you it looked mighty bad for Fan, and I didn't blame Herb, because Miss Carter was nice. She was nice for a teacher, I mean, and sweet and pretty and everything.
Well, I had the engagement ring. I didn't know whether it was mine or whose it was, because Fan had thrown it away and Herb hadn't bothered to pick it up. So it looked as if it was mine, because finders is keepers. So I asked Swatty. So Swatty wanted to look at the ring and when he saw it had a diamond in it he said it was my ring, because Herb and Fan had thrown it away, but that half of it was his, because Herb was as much Swatty's brother as Fan was my sister, and if they had of had the fight on Herb's porch instead of Fan's porch, it would of been Swatty that found the ring. So we had it in pardnership and said we would keep it, because if Herb got engaged again to Fan or to Miss Carter or anybody we could trade it to him for his two-seat tricycle, maybe.
Bony was sitting there all the time, listening to us, so all at once he said:
“Ain't any of the ring going to be mine?”
The reason he said it was because most of the things we have we have sort of in cahoots, the three of us.
“Garsh, no, Bony,” Swatty said. “We'd like to have you part own it but you ain't got no excuse to. Herb ain't your brother, and Fan ain't your sister, like they are mine and Georgie's, are they? You ain't related to the ring no way. We wish he was, don't we, Georgie? but he ain't.”