“Nowhere.” Fudge chuckled. “I was just thinking of something.”
“Huh!” Perry settled back again. “You’re crazy, I guess. Better come for a walk and you’ll feel better.”
“Can’t.” Fudge looked gloomily at the books. “Got to study.”
“Then I’ll beat it.”
“Hold on, can’t you? You don’t have to go yet. I—there isn’t such an awful hurry.” The truth was that Fudge was not an enthusiastic pedestrian, a fact due partly to his physical formation and partly to a disposition contemplative rather than active. Nature had endowed Fudge—his real name, by the way, was William—with a rotund body and capable but rather short legs. Walking for the mere sake of locomotion didn’t appeal to him. He would have denied indignantly that he was lazy, and, to do him justice, he wasn’t. With Fudge it was less a matter of laziness than discrimination. Give him something to do that interested him—such as playing baseball or football—and Fudge would willingly, enthusiastically work his short legs for all that was in them, but this thing of deliberately tiring oneself out with no sensible end in view—well, Fudge couldn’t see it! He had a round face from which two big blue eyes viewed the world with a constant expression of surprise. His hair was sandy-red, and he was fifteen, almost sixteen, years old.
“It’s too nice a day to sit around and do nothing,” objected Perry. “Why don’t you get your studying done earlier?”
“I meant to, but I had some writing to do.” Fudge looked important. Perry smiled slightly. “I finished that story I told you about.”
“Did you?” Perry strove to make his question sound interested. “Are you going to have it printed?”
“Maybe,” replied the other carelessly. “It’s a pippin, all right, Perry! It’s nearly fourteen thousand words long! What do you know about that, son? Maybe I’ll send it to the Reporter and let them publish it. Or maybe I’ll send it to one of the big New York magazines. I haven’t decided yet. Dick says I ought to have it typewritten; that the editors won’t read it unless it is. But it costs like anything. Morris Brent has a typewriter and he said I could borrow it, but I never wrote on one of the things and I suppose it would take me a month to do it, eh? Seems to me if the editors want good stories they can’t afford to be so plaguey particular. Besides, my writing’s pretty easy reading just as soon as you get used to it.”
“You might typewrite the first two or three sheets,” suggested Perry, with a chuckle, “and then perhaps the editor would be so anxious to know how it ended he’d keep right on. What are you going to call it, Fudge?”