“Oh, a classic. Why, it's—it's something everybody knows about, or—or ought to know about. One of the big things, you know. Like—like Shakespeare or—or Robinson Crusoe or Paradise Lost or—lots of them. It's a book everybody reads and always will.”
“I see. Humph! Well, I never read it. . . . I presume likely you think that's pretty funny, don't you?”
Albert tore himself away from the fight at the gate.
“Why, I don't know,” he replied.
“Yes, you do. You think it's awful funny. Well, you wouldn't if you knew more about how busy I've been all my life. I ain't had time to read the way I'd ought to. I read a book once though that I'll never forget. Did you ever read a book called Foul Play?”
“No. . . . Why, hold on, though; I think I have. By Charles Reade, wasn't it?”
“Yes, that's who wrote it, a man named Charles Reade. Laban told me that part of it; he reads a lot, Laban does. I never noticed who wrote it, myself. I was too interested in it to notice little extry things like that. But ain't that a WONDERFUL book? Ain't that the best book you ever read in all your LIFE?”
She dropped the dust-cloth and was too excited and enthusiastic to pick it up. Albert did his best to recall something definite concerning Foul Play. The book had been in the school library and he, who read almost everything, had read it along with the others.
“Let me see,” he said musingly. “About a shipwreck—something about a shipwreck in it, wasn't there?”
“I should say there was! My stars above! Not the common kind of shipwreck, neither, the kind they have down to Setuckit P'int on the shoals. No sir-ee! This one was sunk on purpose. That Joe Wylie bored holes right down through her with a gimlet, the wicked thing! And that set 'em afloat right out on the sea in a boat, and there wan't anything to eat till Robert Penfold—oh, HE was the smart one; he'd find anything, that man!—he found the barnacles on the bottom of the boat, just the same as he found out how to diffuse intelligence tied onto a duck's leg over land knows how many legs—leagues, I mean—of ocean. But that come later. Don't you remember THAT?”