Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

“Pshaw!” Swatty said, only he said it “Pshawr!” like he always does. “If you can't go I won't go, either! If you can't go I'm going to stay home and split the wood I ought to split.”

“Well, I can't go,” I said. So we went into the schoolhouse and into our room. Mamie Little was there. She had just hung up her hat and she was standing by her desk, nearly across the room, and she looked fine, her cheeks were so red and her eyes were kind of sparkly. There were only one or two there besides us.

So, while she was standing by her desk she sort of picked at her dress on her chest a couple of times the way I had been picking at my shirt front, and I was glad to think she had a sulphur bag, too, like I had. It was nice to think we both had the same, only she didn't know I had one.

So I whistled a little whistle—“Wheet!”—and she looked at me. I guess she smiled at me. I felt mighty brave. So I started with the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, pointing at my eye for “I,” and rubbing my hands across each other for “h” and I spelled out “I have a” and she nodded her head at each word to show she knew what I was spelling. So I spelled out “sulphur,” because what I wanted to tell her was “I have a sulphur bag, too,” but when I got to “sulph” she shook her head and I had to begin again, because she couldn't understand.

I was standing up and she was standing up and she was standing so she looked right at me, and I spelled and spelled. Sometimes I began at the beginning and spelled “I have sulph” and sometimes I spelled “sulphur” over and over, but she just shook her head each time and smiled and waited. She was awfully interested, and more and more scholars came in, and pretty soon they were all watching me and trying to spell what I was spelling, but nobody did, I guess. Mamie Little got awfully interested and she was mighty eager to find out what I was trying to spell. Then, all at once, I knew why she couldn't tell; it was because she didn't have any sulphur bag on. So, all at once, I felt mighty cheap! There she was, thinking I had something awfully important I was trying to tell her, and she didn't have a sulphur bag, and I was making a fool of her before the whole school, because what would she think of me telling her I had a sulphur bag if she didn't have one? And making such a fuss about it, as if it was something wonderful like telling her her father was dead, or something.

Then, all of sudden, I remembered I was going to her yard the next day, to help her with her playhouse, and I felt worse than ever. The first thing she would want to know would be what I had tried to spell out, and if I told her she would think I was crazy to make so much fuss about such a thing, and if I did not tell her she would be mad at me forever and maybe talk about me to the other girls. I couldn't bear to think about it and I couldn't help thinking about it. So, after school, I hurried away as fast as I could, and when Swatty caught up with me I told him I had changed my mind and that I would go fishing with him. So that is how Mamie Little helped catch Bony's burglar. If it hadn't been for Mamie Little not knowing how to spell “sulphur” I wouldn't have gone fishing, and Swatty wouldn't have gone either, and the burglar wouldn't have been caught.

So Saturday morning I got in enough wood for all day and it wasn't much, because it was summer and the kitchen wood was all I had to get in. Then I hunted up a new tin can, because when we get through fishing we always throw the old one into the Slough, because by that time the worms that are left are pretty; bad. Sometimes, if the can has been in the sun, they are even worse than that. So I got a new can and went around to the other side of the barn and the spade was there yet, from the last time I had dug worms, so I dug some more.

Just then Swatty came into the yard and he was ready to start. So my mother came to the back door with some sandwiches and things in a box, and I said:

“Aw! I don't want to carry a big box like that! Aw! I just want a couple of sandwiches in my pocket!”

“Georgie!” she said. “You take this box! You 'll be glad enough of everything that's in it!”