"Well, and I'll do it," said Percy testily.
"It's no use trying to sleep," declared Joel, in the middle of the night, and kicking the bed-clothes for the dozenth time into a roll at the foot, "as long as I can see Mamsie's eyes. I'll just get up and tackle that Latin grammar now. Whew! haven't I got to work, though! Might as well begin at it," and he jumped out of bed.
Stepping softly over to the door that led into David's little room, he closed it carefully, and with a sigh, lighted the gas. Then he went over to the table where his schoolbooks ought to have been. But instead, the space was piled with a great variety of things—one or two balls, a tennis racket, and a confusion of fishing tackle, while in front, the last thing that had occupied him that day, lay a book of artificial flies.
Joel set his teeth together hard, and looked at them. "Suppose I shan't get much of this sort of thing this summer," he muttered. "Here goes!" and without trusting himself to take another look, he swept them all off down to the floor and into a corner.
"There," he said, standing up straight, "lie there, will you?" But they loomed up in a suggestive heap, and his fingers trembled to just touch them once.
"I must cover up the things, or else I know I'll be at them," he said, and hurrying over to the bed, he dragged off the cover-lid. "Now," and he threw it over the fascinating mass, "I've GOT to study. Dear me, where are my books?"
For the next five minutes Joel had enough to do to collect his working instruments, and when at last he unearthed them from the corner of his closet where he had thrown them under a pile of boots, he was tired enough to sit down.
"I don't know which to go at first," he groaned, whirling the leaves of the upper book. "It ought to be Latin—but then it ought to be algebra just as much, and as for history—well there—here goes, I'll take them as they come."
With a very red face Joel plunged into the first one under his hand. It proved to be the Latin grammar, and with a grimace, he found the page, and resting his elbows on the table, he seized each side of his stubby head with his hands. "I'll hang on to my hair," he said, and plunged into his task.
And now there was no sound in the room but his hard breathing, and the noise he made turning the leaves, for he very soon found he was obliged to go back many lessons to understand how to approach the one before him; and with cheeks growing every instant more scarlet with shame and confusion, the drops of perspiration ran down his forehead and fell on his book.