Fudge was so intent on all this that he passed the front of the Merrick house, on the corner, without, as usual, announcing his transit with a certain peculiar whistle common to him and his friends. He walked hurriedly, determinedly, trying to keep his thoughts on the pleasure in store, hoping they’d have a rattling good melodrama on the bill to-night and would present less of the “sentimental rot” than was their custom. But Conscience stalked at Fudge’s side, and the further he got from home the more uncomfortable he felt in his mind; and his thoughts refused to stay placed on the “movies.” But while he paused in crossing G Street to let one of the big yellow cars trundle past him a splendid idea came to him. He would telephone! There was a booth in the library, and if he had a nickel—quick examination of his change showed that he was possessed of eleven cents beyond the sum required to purchase admission to the theater. With a load off his mind, he hurried on faster than ever, ran across the library grounds with no heed to the “Keep off the Grass” signs and simply hurtled through the swinging green doors.
It was the work of only a minute or two to seize a book from the rack on the counter—it happened to be a treatise on the Early Italian Painters, but Fudge didn’t care—and make the exchange. The assistant librarian looked somewhat surprised at Fudge’s choice, but secretly hoped that it indicated a departure from the sensational fiction usually selected by the boy, and passed the volume across to him at last with an approving smile. Fudge was too impatient to see the smile, however. The book once in his possession, he hurried to the telephone booth in the outer hall and demanded his number. Then a perfectly good five-cent piece dropped forever out of his possession and he heard his mother’s voice at the other end of the line.
“This is Fudge. Say, Ma, I thought—I’m at the library, Ma, and I got the book I wanted, and I thought, seeing it’s so early—say, Ma, may I go to the movies for a little while?”
“You intended to go all the time, didn’t you, William?” came his mother’s voice.
“Yes’m, but——”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
That was something of a poser. “Well, I meant to, but—but you said not to keep the door open and—and——” Fudge’s voice dwindled into silence.
“Why do you tell me now?”
Gee, but she certainly could ask a lot of hard questions, he reflected. “I thought maybe—oh, I don’t know, Ma. May I? Just for a little while? I’m going with Perry—if you say I can.”
“I’d rather you told me in the first place, William, but telling me now shows that you know you did wrong. You mustn’t tell lies, William, and when you said you were going to the library——”